Identify
by Cici.Nota
Summary: This is what happens after one former hero rides off into the sunset on a self-imposed quest to resurrect another, and - against all reasonable expectations - actually succeeds. (M/M ship)
1. Go: Back to Me

It has to work this time.

All the disparate components were in place, and Go was finally going to get it right. No more distractions in the way, no more side trips, no more accidentally reviving the wrong Roidmudes into the body that was supposed to belong to Chase.

"I have your soul," Go murmured, thumb running over the familiar contours of the Ride Crosser Shift Car, the one that had let Chase temporarily use Kano as a vessel to save Go's life. Again. How many times do I owe him my life?

"What did you say?" Rinna, closer to him than Kyu, looked up.

"Nothing," Go said. They had the data, courtesy of Hypnos and Go's subconscious. They had the right Shift Car. They had rebuilt Chase's body. There was no reason for anything to go wrong this time. He tried to rub the grainy feeling out of his eyes, but it wouldn't go.

"We could pick this up tomorrow," Kyu said, in an uncanny mirror of the incident a few months previously, the one in which they'd accidentally revived Heart instead of Chase.

Go shook his head. He had very little memory of the actual process that had ended up with three Roidmudes in the body intended for Chase, none of them the one he'd wanted, except for both Rinna and Kyu telling him to slow down, to back off, to get some sleep. He didn't have time to slow down; he owed it to Chase to give him back the life he'd lost because Go had failed.

"Everything is ready," Go said, fairly sure that he was correct. "We're ready. Aren't we ready?"

"Yeah, yeah," Kyu said, and Go peered over his shoulder. Lines of code wavered in his vision, and Go blinked to make them settle down into neat little rows. After months of work, he knew them as well as he knew anything else – the data that Hypnos had pulled out of Go's own subconscious, since he'd been the one to see Chase's core explode. "Look, I don't want to keep repeating myself," Kyu said, and Go knew what he was going to say before he said it. "But how sure are we that Banno corrupting Hypnos didn't lead to something going wrong with Chase?"

"We've been over this," Go said. "We've checked the data. None of it looks out of place."

Even if Krim had declined to participate in what he called an exercise in futility and disrespect to the dead, even if the other leading expert in the creation of Roidmudes was both a comic-level supervillain and also dead, Rinna and Kyu were both brilliant. Go glanced over his shoulder at the sealed pit, which Krim had insisted was the right place for the entire Drive project – belts, Shift Cars, Roidmude data and all – and couldn't stop a shiver.

"Are you okay?" Rinna asked.

"Fine," Go said shortly. They didn't have his drive, his determination to see this project through. In calmer moments, he could appreciate how much they'd given to help him in what they thought was a futile quest. At this point, however, he couldn't stop a vague feeling of resentment that they weren't as all-in as he was, that now that they were about to finally get Chase back, they kept trying to get Go to back off and sleep. As if sleep would help him.

"Are you sure you don't want to pick this up tomorrow?" Rinna said. Her gentle tone, clearly meant to be soothing, sounded like nails on a chalkboard. "Make one final check with a clear head?"

Go rubbed his eyes, clearing out the stickiness. "What time is it?" he asked, instead of answering.

"Just after three," Kyu answered. "AM," he added, as if Go didn't know whether it was day or night in his insane pursuit of an unattainable project. Go would have been more annoyed if he'd actually known whether it was three in the morning or three in the afternoon, which he'd somehow lost track of. The Drive Pit needed windows.

"I don't think windows are the issue," Rinna said, and Go realized he'd been speaking out loud.

"That's not the point," he said. "Let's make this happen." Rinna and Kyu exchanged glances and sighed; Go could see that this was his last chance. If they didn't succeed in getting Chase back now, he was going to be on his own with any further attempts.

"Here goes nothing," Kyu said.

The body was in place, hooked into Kyu's rig while Rinna monitored it from a second station. Cooling mist poured over it from above, maintaining its temperature precisely. Go fastened the rebuilt copy of Chase's Mach Driver around its waist, the motion bringing a powerful wave of déjà vu, and clicked the Shift Car into place. Last time, they'd used a copy of the Drive Driver; Go felt that was one of the places they might have gone wrong. He intended for it to go right this time. "Okay," he said, and turned the key.

For a moment nothing happened. Go hovered, watching the Roidmude's blank face closely, as energy finally sparked from the belt. It crawled over the torso, purple flickering fitfully in the artificial fog before flaring so brightly that Go had to look away. He didn't move, not even when the light arced close enough to nearly singe his jacket, not when he had to close his eyes against the radiant outpouring and even more brilliant flash.

The light pressing against his eyelids faded, and Go stumbled forward. His outstretched hands hit the metal frame Rinna had built to support Chase's new body, the metal still vibrating slightly and sending a faint buzzing discharge up through his palms. He opened his eyes, the dark blur resolving into a purple jacket. A purple jacket covered in glitter and chains. The breath caught in Go's throat and he almost couldn't make himself look up.

The last time he'd seen this jacket, it had been on Heart's body in a ridiculous comedy of errors. Go raised his eyes slowly, up to the scarf Chase always wore, and stopped. He couldn't take another disappointment like the last one.

"Go?" The voice was familiar, deep and inexplicably monotone despite the upward lilt at the end.

Go's eyes snapped up, the outlines of a very familiar face at first refusing to register before finally becoming clear. "Chase," he breathed, and grabbed the other man in a bone-crushing hug. The years he'd spent trying to put Chase back together had finally paid off, the debt he'd owed was repaid. "Chase," he said again.

"What are you doing?" Chase asked, not reacting in the slightest to being manhandled. Go hugged him harder, reveling in Chase doing exactly what he should have been doing.

"Go, maybe step back and let him breathe," Rinna said, disentangling Go and gently pulling him away.

"He's a Roidmude, he doesn't need to breathe," Go said. His face hurt, and he realized it was because he was smiling widely enough to nearly split his cheeks in two.

"I – I can't believe we did it." Kyu shoved his glasses back into place, moving hesitantly toward the revived Roidmude. "Chase, how do you feel?"

Chase cocked his head to the side in a gesture Go had once hated. He drank it in now, barely blinking. "I feel normal," he said, and seemed to notice the framework that had supported his body for the first time. "I remember dying," he added, and stepped down.

Go could see Kyu and Rinna exchanging glances out of the corner of his eye. "Everything should be fine, now," Rinna said. "There are some tests we should run, just to make sure."

"I can run them," Go said. "You guys go get some rest. We'll see you in the morning." A brief scuffle caught his attention and he looked over to see Rinna's hand firmly over Kyu's mouth. She snatched it away when she saw him looking, and smiled.

"You know which tests to run," she said, almost but not quite asking a question.

"I know," Go said. There was very little he didn't know, at this point, about Roidmude construction and programming. "Thank you," he remembered to say, because there was no way Chase would be standing in front of him, alive, without help from the other two people in the room.

"We'll see you in the morning," Kyu said, inexplicably sounding resigned, and Rinna pulled him out of the door.

Go returned his attention to Chase, only to find his friend watching the byplay with an air of curiosity. Not that anyone who didn't know Chase as well as Go had would have been able to read the expression on his stoic face, but Go could tell.

"You have a lot to tell me," Chase said. He pulled the belt off his waist, and nothing happened. He'd successfully passed the first test. Go took the belt out of his hand and put it down on the nearest flat surface.

"You died," he said, and then his throat closed off and he couldn't say anything else. Chase simply watched him for a long moment.

"I chose how I died," he said finally, breaking the silence, and Go drew in a ragged breath.

"It sucked," he said. "I didn't want you to die."

"But you don't like me," Chase said. "You told me I wasn't human."

Hearing his own words back stung; he'd been regretting them for months, for years, and hearing them again was no less than he deserved. "I was wrong," Go said.

"But I'm not human," Chase said, and Go looked at him, startled. A tiny smile was playing across Chase's lips. "Technically, you were correct."

"You – you – that's not funny," Go said, because if Chase was teasing him, then he truly had his friend back. Understand the finer points of human behavior Chase did not, but he had learned how to push emotional buttons by the end.

"What isn't funny?" Chase asked, and Go gave up.

"I need to run some tests on you," he said, but the tests were a formality. He could already tell.

"Then you'll tell me what you did?" Chase asked, and seemed satisfied at Go's nod. He submitted to the tests Go ran for the sake of running; his code checked out against what Go had put together with the information from the artificial intelligence Hypnos and his former mentor Professor Harley, and his physical reflexes matched his pre-death statistics. Throughout the process, Chase patiently followed instructions and volunteered no information unless asked.

The Drive Pit was cold when Go finished, the heating having long since cycled down for the night and the accumulated warmth of the day having dissipated. He pulled his jacket more tightly around himself and shut off the computer at Kyu's workstation. "I think that's it," he said. "You pass with flying colors."

"With flying colors," Chase repeated, with the air of someone memorizing something. "Go," he said, abruptly. "I have a memory I can't explain."

"What?" Go straightened, all traces of weariness fading. The tests Rinna and Kyu had developed should have been thorough enough to detect any inconsistencies, and Go had found none.

"A – a fight," Chase said. "With a ghost, and a new Kamen Rider I hadn't seen before."

Go relaxed. "You're just remembering something that happened a couple of years ago," he said. "There was time travel. History changed. And then it went back."

"Years?" Chase said, sounding almost sharp.

"It's been – you died almost two and a half years ago." Go scrubbed at his eyes, trying to get the excess moisture out of them. "It's January. January of 2018."

"January," Chase repeated. "I did not mean for you to use up your life."

"Use up my life?" Go retorted, stung. "I didn't ask you to die for me!"

"You are my friend." Chase regarded him steadily, and Go unaccountably blushed. He was beginning to remember why he'd found Chase so irritating, no matter how glad he was to have him back.

"Friends don't make friends watch them die," Go muttered, not that it got a reaction out of Chase. "Friends also say things like Thank you for resurrecting me."

"I was not aware this was such a common situation."

"Now you're just messing with me," Go said, and was rewarded with a tiny smile. "I knew it. Come on."

"Where?" Chase followed him to the door, glancing around the mess filling the Drive Pit.

"Home," Go said.

Home was an apartment that Go hadn't spent much time in; the lock had a tendency to stick, and the door rattled on its hinges when he finally managed to turn the key. It creaked, too, an eerie sound that he'd grown to hate and subsequently avoid. It had been easier to just sleep at the Drive Pit anyway, instead of wasting time by going back to an unwelcoming apartment.

Chase left his shoes neatly at the entrance, turning them around so that the toes faced the door in a perfect display of etiquette. After an almost imperceptible pause, he gathered up the shoes Go had left haphazardly in front of the door and placed them appropriately. Go blinked, not quite sure what to make of it. "Who taught you that?" he said.

Without the benefit of actual words, Chase's expression clearly conveyed that Go was the one who had failed Standard Human Etiquette. Go rolled his eyes. "You want some coffee?" he asked.

Not that Chase needed food, or drink; his internal power source would no doubt keep him functioning perfectly well long after Go and everyone he knew was dead, if he kept his systems appropriately maintained. Chase had started drinking water, though, when the rest of them had wandered into the cafeteria for lunch, and had picked up the occasional cup of coffee when the Special Investigation Unit had had pots of it lying around. Go wasn't sure if he did it to seem more human or because he got genuine enjoyment out of it.

When Chase had started mimicking human coffee consumption, Go had had no idea how he could swallow the liquid, or if it would have some sort of adverse effect on his non-human and artificial physiology. He knew now exactly how Chase's Roidmude body processed liquids he ingested, and that anything solid would cause problems with Chase's internal mechanisms.

"Is this the appropriate hour for coffee?" Chase asked.

Go looked at the watch on his wrist. "It's almost six," he said. "Seems like an okay time to me."

"Do you not plan on sleeping?"

It was way too difficult to tell if Chase was trying to push buttons or asking out of a sense of curiosity. Go filled the coffee maker with water and added grounds to the filter before answering. "Too late for sleep," he said. "It's already tomorrow."

The words had sounded more like they made sense in his head.

"Which reminds me," he said, and sent a text to his sister. I have something to show you, it read. She deserved to see Chase's return in person; she had been his friend before any of them had accepted Chase as anything but a dubious ally and a potential monster.

You're up early, came an almost immediate answer.

So are you, Go sent back.

No one tells you that having a baby means you will never sleep again. Go felt himself smile at that one; he was looking forward to seeing how well Chase's stoicism held up to the contradictory ball of purely adorable and loudly aggravating that was his sister's firstborn son.

So now's a good time? He poured the coffee into two mugs, handing one off to Chase.

Why, is something wrong?

Go could almost see her calling to figure out what emergency had him ready to race over to her apartment at six in the morning. Nothing's wrong, he texted back. Later's okay, too.

Right on cue, the phone began to buzz. Go sighed and answered it. "Good morning," he sang. "It's a beautiful day!"

"You're not up early, you just haven't been to sleep," Kiriko said, voice muffled slightly. Go deduced that her hands were full of small child and that she had tucked the phone against her shoulder.

"You caught me," he said. The coffee was just barely cool enough to drink, and it was delicious. It wasn't good coffee, but Go didn't particularly care. Delicious was relative and linked to caffeine content.

"Chase wouldn't want you making yourself sick," Kiriko said, demonstrating that despite the years they'd spent apart, she still knew him better than anyone else.

"He would have no idea," Go retorted. Chase gave him an inquiring look and Go waved him off. He had no idea whether or not Chase could hear Kiriko's side of the conversation and he didn't want to spoil the surprise.

"You're being pedantic," Kiriko said, and that wasn't a word that anyone applied to Shijima Go, ever. "Avoiding the issue," Kiriko continued.

"Whatever." The coffee had vanished somehow, and the pot wasn't big enough to make more than two cups at a time. Go rinsed out the pot and refilled it.

"Stop making coffee," Kiriko said, and Go wondered briefly if she had installed a camera in his kitchen somewhere.

"I'm not making coffee," he said, emptying out the first filter and putting a new one in. Chase perked up, looking at him with interest.

"If that is not making coffee," he said, "then what are you doing?"

A thud sounded from the speaker in Go's ear, and he paused just short of starting the fresh batch. "Kiriko?" He heard scraping noises, and then Kiriko's voice sounded, tight with an emotion he couldn't identify.

"Is that Kano in your apartment, Shijima Go?" she asked, and whatever Go had been expecting, that wasn't it.

"What? No." He frowned at the phone.

"I know you miss Chase, but Kano is his own person. It's – I know this has been hard on you, okay? But that's not healthy."

"Wait, what exactly do you think I'm doing with Kano?" Go stabbed the button to start the coffee maker for the second time in fifteen minutes, the force of it sending the little machine sliding backwards across the counter. Chase caught it before it went over the edge, his expression almost clearly curious.

"Go," his sister said, exasperation in her voice. "Don't make me spell it out."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Go hung up the phone and glared at it. He'd wanted to surprise Kiriko with Chase, and he wasn't going to let her wild accusations stop him. Seriously, what does she think I'm doing with Kano.

Chase just watched, eyes hooded, as he sipped the coffee he hadn't finished. "Kiriko seems upset," he said. "Perhaps we should not bother her."

"That," Go said, pointing at him, "was not a Chase thing to say." The meaning of the sentence sunk in, and Go had the sudden thought that he'd missed something, that he hadn't got Chase back after all, and this was some facsimile that was pretending to be his friend with the aim of something entirely different. Go crossed the short distance to his maybe-friend, grabbing Chase by the jaw with both hands and tilting his face upwards. "You are Chase, right? Right?"

True to his nature, Chase made zero reaction to being manhandled. He simply put down his coffee cup, reached up, and removed Go's hands. "You're behaving erratically," he said, which wasn't a denial.

"I'm not erratic, you're erratic." Go tried to pull his hands free, but Chase's grip was like iron, and he gave up. He'd tested Chase, after all, he knew that he was who he was supposed to be, and it was probably normal for someone to act a little weird after being resurrected. Even if they weren't human to begin with. "We're going to see my sister. Come on."

Chase regarded him steadily and then let go. "Your coffee," he said, and Go had forgotten about the second pot.

"Leave it," he said. "It'll still be here when we get back."

Chase reached around him to turn off the machine. "Fire safety," he said, in response to Go's half-sputtered question, and Go rolled his eyes.

"It's not going to burn down the building," he said, and somehow Chase managed to look skeptical of his assertion without actually changing his expression. "Let's just go."

Traffic in the city was a nightmare, even at the early hour, and the sun was well overhead by the time Go stood in front of the Tomari family door, Chase carefully hidden behind him, and rang the bell. Shin's car was gone, although Go distinctly remembered Kiriko saying that her husband was home and asleep. He blinked, wondering for a moment if he'd actually talked to his sister or if he'd dreamed it while awake.

The door opened, Kiriko balancing a calm Eiji on one hip. "Go," she said. "What's going on?"

"I told you I have something to show you," Go said, fairly sure now that they'd had the conversation he thought they did. "Look!"

He stepped aside and gestured. Chase performed admirably, which in Go's terms meant he stood stiffly and without expression as Go waved his arms up and down. "Mrs. Tomari," Chase said.

"It's still Kiriko," Kiriko said absently, eyes wide. "Go, you – what did – how – Chase!"

"I'm coming in," Go said cheerfully, pulling the door open wider and squeezing past his sister. He left his shoes in the entrance and strode into the living room. Kiriko moved aside to let Chase follow, and Chase again rearranged Go's shoes. Go sighed.

"Please excuse my intrusion," Chase said, and Kiriko closed her mouth.

"He's back!" Go said. "Chase is back!"

"I can see – how did – that's – welcome back, Chase." Kiriko shifted her son on her hip, and finally smiled at Chase.

"Thank you," Chase said gravely, and neither of them was as happy as the situation called for.

Go gave up on both of them and wandered over to the couch. There was a giant stuffed dolphin taking up most of it, which Go thought had been there for months; he displaced it and sprawled over the comfortable cushions. On second thought, the dolphin was squishy and huggable, and he retrieved it from the floor. "Both of you should be more excited," he said, stifling an urge to yawn.

"Chase, would you like something to drink?" Kiriko said, apparently determined to cling to social ritual.

"No, thank you," Chase returned, and continued to stand awkwardly in front of the door. Go groaned. This was not proceeding the way he'd planned.

"Have you told Shinnosuke?" Kiriko asked.

"No," Go said. "Rinna might have. Or Kyu. They've been helping."

"I know they have," Kiriko said, and it sounded sharp. Go sat up, still holding the dolphin, and rested his chin on it.

"You're upset," he said.

"I can leave," Chase offered, and Kiriko laughed a little. Go couldn't see her face, but she moved stiffly as she crossed the room to put Eiji in the playpen and gave him something Go couldn't see clearly to hold on to. When she turned around, tears were spilling out of her eyes.

"Don't leave," she said. "I'm happy to see you again. Really happy."

"But you're crying," Chase said, and Go felt inexplicably guilty.

"They're happy tears." Kiriko reached out, hesitantly, and squeezed Chase's shoulder, and then hugged him tightly before letting go abruptly. "I'm sorry," she said.

Chase looked at Go. "Don't worry about it?" he said, as if he wasn't sure what the appropriate response was.

"When – when did you get back?"

"Maybe three?" Go answered, when Chase looked at him again. "I think it was around three. We would have come earlier, but I had to run tests, and they took forever."

"You do not knock on people's doors at three in the morning, Go," his sister said, her tone reminding him that she had been the one consistent authority figure for the majority of his life.

"Even for dead friends come back to life?" Go said flippantly, and then the enormity of what he'd done hit him. "Chase," he said, and the room blurred as the name caught in his throat and he couldn't stop crying.


	2. Chase: Something Good

Chase considered himself a student of the human condition; perhaps, one day, he would understand enough of it to feel human, instead of always watching on the sidelines as the humans around him reacted in perplexing ways. At the moment, he had no idea why either of his two friends had engaged in their current emotional reactions, and consequently did not know what to do about it. Kiriko was standing within arm's reach, wiping her eyes with both hands, and scolding her little brother. Chase reached out to pat her comfortingly on the shoulder, something he was sure he had seen other people do.

Kiriko moved out of reach, leaving Chase with his hand extended for no apparent reason, just as Go reacted with a predictable attempt at levity, and Chase felt a moment of relief that at least one of his friends was finally acting reasonably before everything fell apart again.

"Chase," Go said, and his face crumpled. He buried it in the ridiculous giant stuffed dolphin he had collected from off the floor, shoulders shaking, and Chase didn't know how to fix it.

"No, sweetie, it's okay," Kiriko said, sitting down and putting an arm over her brother. In the back of his mind, Chase felt vindicated in his choice of action to comfort Kiriko earlier. Go just clutched at the dolphin more tightly, making choked little noises that Chase found he absolutely did not want to hear. Reacting to the atmosphere in the room, no doubt, Kiriko's son began to wail. With an apologetic glance, Kiriko abandoned Go and collected her son out of the box she'd placed him in.

The small child – and no one had thought to confirm its name for Chase; he remembered Shinnosuke's son's name from the time traveling Roidmude incident, but he didn't know if it would have been changed or not following that debacle – refused to be quieted, and Kiriko left the room after a relatively short time. Go was still curled around his plush toy, no calmer than before.

Chase crossed the room, hesitantly. "Go, if I am distressing you, I can leave," he said, and Go's head snapped up.

"No," he said, and none of it made sense.

"I don't know what to do," Chase said, hating feeling helpless.

"Don't die again," Go said, and Chase had no idea whether or not that was another attempt at levity. None of the rules he'd carefully collected regarding human behavior were applicable. Go wasn't smiling, though, not even a little; he was staring at Chase with wide eyes.

"I won't," Chase said tentatively, and Go buried his face in the toy again. Chase decided, arbitrarily, to count it as a success, because otherwise there were far too many variables and an excess of uncertainty. Another thought occurred to him, this one based in his admittedly basic knowledge of human physiology. "Go," he said. "Have you slept?"

"What?" Go looked up again, blinking. "You sound like Rinna," he said, which Chase chose to interpret as a negative. In the seconds during which Chase tried to figure out how to suggest that Go might be experiencing an excessive emotional reaction due to fatigue, Go sighed obnoxiously, put down the dolphin, and stood up. "Fine," he said, clearly irritated and Chase still had no idea why.

"Are you leaving already?" Kiriko asked from the doorway. The baby was quieter, and Chase could see something plugging its mouth. He filed it away as an appropriate method to silence small children.

"Yes," Chase answered.

"I'm surrounded by people who think I don't know how to take care of myself," Go said, inexplicably sullen. "I'm being sent home to take a nap."

"You can sleep here, if you want," Kiriko offered.

Go scrubbed his face dry with a sleeve, and when he put his arm down, his expression had eased. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to snap at you."

Chase wanted to know what Kiriko had done to merit that particular response, but he kept his mouth shut. In his moment of confusion, he missed whatever Kiriko said to answer Go's apparently unprompted apology.

"No, I'll go home." Go stretched. "Chase, you can stay, if you want. I mean, if that's okay with you." He looked at Kiriko.

"Of course," Kiriko said.

"I wish to drive," Chase said. "I will accompany Go."

"You didn't bring the bikes?" Kiriko glanced toward the window, although the street wasn't visible from where she was standing.

"I was doing basic maintenance on the Ride Chaser," Go said. "I, uh, borrowed one of the cars from the school."

Going by Kiriko's expression, Chase deduced that Go should have left the driving school's property alone, and the Drive Pit being hidden in the basement of the driving school was not blanket permission to borrow one of their vehicles. His conclusion was verified within seconds.

"Go," Kiriko said, the tone in her voice identifiable as exasperation. "Put it back."

"I will, I will." Go waved his hands in a dismissive gesture. "I promise. They won't even notice it went missing."

Chase felt that the driving school was definitely likely to notice that it had lost one of its vehicles. He did not feel it necessary to make the statement out loud. "May I have the keys," he said instead.

Go gave him a suspicious look before digging into his pockets to produce a single key with a numbered tag attached to it. "You remember how to drive a car, right," he said.

"I got my driver's license before you did," Chase reminded him. Go rolled his eyes.

"You're never going to let that go," he said, and then the corners of his mouth pulled down again. He rubbed at his eyes with his palms, as if Chase couldn't see the moisture gathering again. "We, uh, we should go," he said, and hugged his sister.

"Drive safely," Kiriko said.

"I promise," Chase said seriously. Keeping his friends safe was an important responsibility, one he intended to uphold to the fullest extent of his ability. Going by Kiriko's amused smile, he hadn't quite responded correctly.

Chase very carefully checked the exterior of the car before climbing in, Go standing impatiently by the passenger door, and then set the mirrors and seat precisely for optimum control of the vehicle.

"You don't have to do all of that," Go said.

"Perhaps my attention to proper detail is what led to my more rapid acquisition of a driver's license," Chase said.

"You don't have to be smug about it." Go turned to stare out the window. "You know how to get back?"

"I was paying attention to the route," Chase informed him. He had also noted which streets were one way, where public transportation stops were, and observed general traffic patterns. He started the engine, signaled, and pulled onto the street. He obeyed traffic laws precisely on the drive back to Go's sterile apartment, both out of a sense of obligation and not wanting to get stopped driving what amounted to a stolen vehicle.

Go paid less and less attention to what Chase was doing throughout the drive, although when Chase turned off the engine, he sat up abruptly. "That was quick," he said.

The drive back had taken approximately 58% longer than the drive out, which Chase attributed to heavier traffic patterns, making Go's statement utterly inaccurate, and he said so.

"Whatever," Go muttered, and stretched in his seat before opening the door. Chase locked the vehicle before following Go. Go's shoes were haphazardly placed in the center of the entrance again, and Chase sighed before nudging them at least to the side. He placed his own boots in the correct position, pacing down the hall in sock feet.

Go had flopped over onto a low bed in the single bedroom without bothering to either undress or pull back the blanket, feet hanging over the edge. "Go?" Chase said tentatively, but failed to get a coherent answer. Chase frowned and backed out of the room, not sure what to do with himself. The car should be returned to the driving school, he concluded after a moment, to reduce the chance of repercussions.

In order to drive legally, Chase needed to carry his driver's license; he'd given it to Go before he died, and could only hope Go had kept it. Chase weighed searching the apartment – invasion of privacy – against driving without having his license with him – unauthorized operation of a motor vehicle – and concluded that the second infraction was heavier. He closed the door to the bedroom as quietly as he could and put his shoes back on; despite the relative severity of both infractions, he was more reluctant to invade Go's privacy.

Chase wasn't entirely sure where Go had gotten the car from, but maybe he could just leave it in front of the driving school and hope that that was the end of it. He drove carefully, again following all the traffic laws, and finally parked the vehicle next to its intended destination. He was fairly sure it wasn't supposed to be in that particular zone, but it seemed to have relatively little foot traffic, and he was relatively confident he could find his way into the Drive Pit to finish putting the Ride Chaser back together without encountering opposition.

"Officer Kano!" came a voice from behind him as he walked toward the Drive Pit, having left the keys in the vehicle. Chase ignored it, until someone grabbed him by the shoulder. "Officer Kano," said the man who'd spoken. "What are you wearing?"

"No," Chase said. "You are mistaken."

The volume of the officer's voice had attracted attention, and there was no way Chase was getting into the Drive Pit unnoticed now. He looked around, trying to back out of the immediate area, but the officer was persistent in his assumption that Chase was the man whose face he had copied.

"You are mistaken as to my identity," Chase said again. His driver's license would have solved this problem, he reflected, but he hadn't predicted this particular consequence to not having it. He had to walk away from the officer in the end, ignoring the man entirely in a clear breach of etiquette, but he made it into the Drive Pit without being further molested.

The Ride Chaser was off to one side of the Drive Pit, behind the frame that had apparently been used to rebuild his body. Its engine was entirely laid open; apparently Go had been replacing fuel lines and gaskets, which Chase felt did not constitute basic maintenance. Given the state of the older lines, though, he saw why Go had felt the need to replace them. He fingered one of the stiff tubes, bending it and feeling it crack under the strain. The Ride Chaser hadn't been driven regularly, he thought, and the idea was surprisingly unpleasant. He didn't like to think of his vehicle as having been neglected.

The Ride Macher was in another corner, and Chase examined it out of a sense of curiosity. It was dusty, slightly battered, and gave an impression of having been used but not properly maintained. Chase sighed.

Putting the Ride Chaser back together was well within Chase's skill set; he knew very well how to service and maintain his vehicle, and although Go had stopped halfway through the process, he'd at least collected all the appropriate supplies. It wasn't long before Chase had finished both thoroughly inspecting the bike to see what exactly needed to be done and putting it back together. The Ride Chaser was clean, he noticed, no dust in any of the places he would have expected to see it in a vehicle that clearly hadn't actually been driven in all the time he'd been gone.

"Why didn't you clean your own vehicle?" he muttered, turning toward the Ride Macher. It needed attention, too, and Go had clearly been giving that attention to all the wrong things. Chase's second self-assigned task took a little longer than his first; fluids needed changing, on top of everything else Go had neglected, and there was at least one small dent that Chase pounded back out into a smooth surface.

Chase was in the process of cleaning the oil off his hands when the door to the Drive Pit slid open. Chase straightened and turned, still holding the now less-than-clean rag. He didn't know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't half the Special Investigation Unit crowding through the door in a knot.

"I told you," he heard a voice he identified as Saijo Kyu, despite not being able to see him. "There he is."

Shinnosuke was at the front of the knot, tall enough to obscure half the group behind him, and he stumbled into the room as if pushed. Given how the rest of the knot of people spilled through the door after him, he might well have been. "Chase!"

"Tomari Shinnosuke," Chase said, and then corrected himself. "Shinnosuke," he said, somewhat hesitantly, because while Shinnosuke had said to use his given name, Chase wasn't sure the rule still applied if he'd been dead for more than two years.

"You're alive!" Shinnosuke was smiling so hard Chase thought his face might crack in half, and this led to a round of questions asked on top of each other and people touching him as though he might be an illusion instead of something solid and generally a great deal of noise. Chase had never been the recipient of quite so much simultaneous attention, and eventually found himself backed against a desk. His hand came down on something both irregularly and familiarly shaped, and his fingers closed on it convulsively.

The Mach Driver, or at least his version of it, helped clear his mind a little, but before he could start ordering the questions he'd been asked into some semblance of rationality, Shinnosuke was pushing the small crowd back.

"Okay, give him a little space," he said, shooing the rest of the people out of Chase's immediate vicinity, and Chase noticed a face identical to his own for the first time.

"Officer Kano," he said. All he knew about the man whose face he'd copied was the name.

The face in question was more mobile than his own, its owner looking at him now with a succession of emotions flickering across it before settling on something resembling calm. "Chase," Kano Koichi said. "Uh, welcome back." He was wearing a suit and tie, Chase noticed, instead of the uniform he'd been wearing when Chase had borrowed his face; he'd done well since Chase had last seen him.

"Thank you," Chase said gravely.

"Um." Kano's eyes flicked between Shinnosuke and Chase. "I'll – keep me updated, okay?" He left abruptly, and Chase wondered what he'd done wrong this time. It was harder to navigate personal interaction when he didn't have a specific mission, but all the Roidmudes were gone and he no longer had the same clear and specific goals he'd had before.

"Don't worry about it," Shinnosuke said. "It's weird for him, to see you."

"My intent was not to cause distress," Chase said cautiously.

"You're – seriously, don't worry about it," Shinnosuke repeated. "I can't believe Go put you back together."

"Hey," Saijo said. "He didn't do all the work. Rinna and I helped."

"Wait, you're not staying here, are you?" Shinnosuke looked around the Drive Pit. "You don't have to live here. You can't live here. You need somewhere to stay."

"I can –" Chase started, but he had no answer to give. Go had implied, but not said outright, and Chase didn't like to make incorrect assumptions. "I am capable of looking after myself," he said eventually.

"No, of course." Shinnosuke's gaze dropped to the Mach Driver briefly. "My door is always open," he said. "If you need it."

"Kiriko said the same thing," Chase assured him.

"You've seen Kiriko already?" Shinnosuke appeared more surprised than anything else.

"Go and I drove to see her this morning. You were already gone," Chase explained. Shinnosuke smiled at that.

"You met Eiji, too?" he said.

"Your son is an exemplary model of an immature human," Chase said, and Shinnosuke blinked for a moment before laughing out loud. "Was that not an appropriate compliment?"

"Most people," Shinnosuke said, "will tell parents that their child is cute. Most women, at least. Men don't make comments that often."

"Cute," Chase repeated. "Your son is cute, Shinnosuke."

Shinnosuke laughed again, which wasn't the response Chase had been expecting. "Thank you," he said. "I'd say I'm proud of him, but Kiriko had more to do with it than I did. You'll have to tell her."

"I should have told her this morning," Chase said.

"I don't think she minded," Shinnosuke said, though he couldn't possibly have known, unless he was extrapolating Kiriko's likely reaction based on how well he knew her.

"Chase, Tomari." Otta wandered up to them. "I hate to cut this short, but I have to go back to work." He looked Chase directly in the face. "I'm glad to see you're back," he said. "I hope you work with us again."

"I hadn't thought about it," Chase replied honestly. "But thank you."

"Come on, Kyu," Otta said, attempting to herd the other man out of the room.

"But," Saijo said, pointing at one of the work stations. "This is the first successful resurrection of –"

"Later," Otta told him. "Out."

Chase watched them go, leaving him alone in the suddenly silent Drive Pit with only Shinnosuke. He felt a tightness under his skin ease, and Shinnosuke idly leaned against another desk. He'd placed himself so that Chase had a free path in any direction, Chase noticed; he was fairly sure Shinnosuke had done it on purpose.

"I want you to know that I trust you," Shinnosuke said. "You're my friend. You're important to me, and my family."

Chase thought he knew what Shinnosuke was trying to say, and didn't want to consider. "Tomari Shinnosuke," he said, to make sure that Shinnosuke knew he was completely serious. "If I engage in behavior that is threatening to anyone, I want you to stop me."

"That's not what – you wouldn't," Shinnosuke spluttered, standing upright and gesturing toward Chase. "You're – you're you," he said.

"Given my history, you would be correct in being wary," Chase said, but Shinnosuke didn't look as though the statement was reassuring in the slightest. "I do not anticipate any such behavior," he said. "But I would not want anyone hurt because of me."

"Ugh," Shinnosuke said, and buried his face in his hands. He looked up again, eyes clear. "Okay, Chase. If that's what you need to hear, then if you turn out to be a threat, I will stop you."

Chase blinked; he had no uncertainties regarding his own programming or behavior, and he'd been trying to reassure Shinnosuke, not the other way around. It occurred to him that Shinnosuke would be happier if he just agreed, though. "Thank you," he said, and let Shinnosuke think what he wanted.

"So," Shinnosuke said brightly. His tie had come loose at some point, and it slid to the side a little as Shinnosuke started wandering across the Drive Pit. "You've been busy already," he said.

That wasn't a question, and didn't require an answer. Chase watched Shinnosuke look over the Ride Chaser and the Ride Macher, and draw a finger across the pristine surface of both vehicles.

"Did you wash both bikes?" Shinnosuke asked, turning around.

"The Ride Chaser was already clean," Chase answered, and Shinnosuke nodded absently.

"So I should get back to work too," he said, voice trailing off. "Although there really isn't anything pressing going on," he added, poking at the Ride Macher.

That wasn't a question either. Chase kept his mouth shut.

"You and Go should both come over tonight," Shinnosuke said. "Kind of like a family reunion." He looked at Chase. "I mean, you're, well. You should both come over."

"I will inform Go," Chase said, because that did seem like it was waiting for a response, and Shinnosuke broke into a relieved smile.

"I'll try not to end up working too late," he said. "But you two should go anyway, even if something comes up."

"Are you nervous about something?" Chase couldn't help asking. Shinnosuke was talking far more than he usually did.

"I just." Shinnosuke stopped and turned toward him, hands on his hips. "I want things to go well," he said. "You being gone has been rough on Kiriko. And Go. I don't want them to have to suffer again."

"Go told me not to die," Chase said. "I told him I wouldn't."

"That does sound like you," Shinnosuke said, and clapped his hands together. "I'll see you both tonight, then." He left the room, bumping into the now-quiescent framework on the way, and closing the door behind him.

Chase watched the door for a moment, but no one came back through it. He crossed the floor, checking that he'd put everything back in its proper place, and reached for the helmet he was supposed to wear while operating the Ride Chaser in his human guise. Or he would have reached for his helmet, if his hands hadn't been full of the Mach Driver and the Signal Chaser. He didn't remember picking up the Signal Bike at all, but it had indented the skin on his palm.

The Driver fit around his waist, just as he remembered. Chase pushed the Signal Chaser into its slot and depressed it, hearing the familiar tone of the Driver announce his transformation and feeling the familiar weight of the armor settle around his skin. It felt right, as though he had a purpose, even though there was nothing to fight. Chase raised his armored hands, turning them over and back, and classified his behavior as ridiculous. He undid the transformation, feeling the armor fall away. He didn't need to fight to have a purpose, even if that was all he had ever done.

Humans grew and changed, learning new skills all the time. Chase was sure of it. Not that he had seen any of his friends undergo such a transformation – but he had, Chase thought; Kiriko and Shinnosuke starting a family was an example of a change of purpose, wasn't it? Not that he wanted to do the same, but he was trying to become more human. To further that goal, Chase thought he too wanted to learn new skills, to perhaps learn how to protect people in a way other than fighting things that no longer existed.

The Signal Chaser went into his pocket and the Mach Driver went into its storage compartment in the Ride Chaser. A slow circuit around the Drive Pit to make sure he wasn't missing anything later, Chase put on his helmet, following appropriate driving regulations, and started the bike. Despite its lack of use, it roared to life with very little hesitation; of course it did, he reminded himself, he'd made certain every component was in proper working order, and there was no reason to be surprised.

Somewhat to Chase's surprise, it was dark outside when he pulled the Ride Chaser onto the street. He hadn't thought he'd spent quite so much time in the Drive Pit, regardless of the amount of work he'd done on both bikes.

He parked it outside Go's apartment in precisely the same spot where Go had left the car he'd borrowed from the driving school, and ascended the three flights of stairs to the fourth floor. The apartment looked out over a small temple and associated cemetery, Go's door almost directly opposite the large bell hanging over the entrance. Chase was reaching to open the door when it was flung open from the inside, nearly impacting his hand.

"Chase!" Go was standing in the entrance, feet half in his shoes and hair and clothes disheveled, looking around wildly. "Chase," he said again with a semblance of calm, meeting Chase's eyes. "You're, uh, there you are."

"I'm back," Chase said, not sure if it was the appropriate phrase. Technically, Go's apartment wasn't Chase's home.

"Welcome home," Go said, and stood aside to let him in.

The apartment was cold, but Chase remembered that the single piece of furniture in the living room was a low table with a heater attached to the bottom, and the sliding door proved to open onto a largely empty closet dominated by a single large shelf just above waist height. The quilt belonging to the kotatsu was neatly folded in one corner, if somewhat dusty, and Chase pulled it out.

'What," Go said, having followed him down the short hallway. "What are you doing?"

"It's cold," Chase said. The curtains that should have been covering the balcony doors were open as well, leaving the southern wall of the room exposed to potential drafts. Chase placed the quilt appropriately, plugged in the kotatsu, and turned it on.

"I never use that," Go said quietly, which Chase had already deduced. Go clearly hadn't spent much time in his own home, neglecting it in much the same manner as he'd neglected his bike. "I mean, thank you."

Chase didn't answer, closing the curtains instead. The balcony – useful for drying clothes, he thought he remembered Kiriko saying once, a long time ago – was accessible through the kitchen as well, and he closed those curtains. "It will be warmer now," he said, in response to Go's bemused stare.

"Warmer," Go said, and rubbed his eyes. "Warmer. Right."

"Shinnosuke requested our presence in his home," Chase said, and Go blinked and stared at him, gaze sharpening.

"Why didn't you say something earlier?" he asked, completely ignoring the fact that Chase had given him the message within a reasonable amount of time from his arrival.

Chase folded his legs under the warmth of the kotatsu and sat quietly while Go rushed around the apartment with a great deal of noise and very little effect, although Chase observed that he did change his clothes.

"No, no, we're on our way," Go said into his phone. "Chase just came back. Okay. See you soon." He poked his head through the door. "Well?"

Chase turned the kotatsu back off and extricated himself from its warmth. The temperature in the apartment was well within his range of tolerance, but the warmth from under the small table was surprisingly pleasant. He followed Go to the door, slipping smoothly into his boots and waiting for Go to finish struggling with his tangled shoelaces, and let Go take the lead going down the stairs.

"What – you took the car back," Go said, staring at the Ride Chaser occupying what Chase now observed was a numbered parking space.

"Yes," Chase said.

"I can't ride on the back of your bike." Go folded his arms, shivering slightly in the breeze. He was wearing the same white hoodie Chase had never seen him without, and no heavier jacket against the January chill.

Chase had the sneaking suspicion he should offer an apology, although he wasn't entirely sure why, but before he could say anything, Go pulled the phone out of his pocket and started texting rapidly. "You go ahead," he said. "I'm going to go collect my bike."

"If you wish to operate the Ride Chaser, I can ride on the back," Chase said. He had the necessary strength and agility to balance on what technically wasn't a passenger seat, although technically it was a violation of traffic regulations again.

"No, you can't," Go said, looking at the bike, then at Chase, then back at the bike. "Can you?"

Chase smiled.

Somewhat to his surprise, they were not stopped despite clearly unsafe operation of a motor vehicle, and Chase revised his opinion of the city's police force slightly downwards. Not that he wanted to cast aspersions on Shinnosuke or any of his other human friends, even mentally, but there was maintaining a balance of personnel against potential risk, and then there was blatantly ignoring unsafe conduct. Chase hopped gracefully off the back of the bike and turned to look at Go.

"You don't have to be smug about it," Go muttered. "I'll be right back."

Chase settled into the seat while he waited, listening to the sounds of the engine cooling down. It hadn't made any untoward noises on its second trip, either. His hand wandered behind him to the cover of the storage compartment where he'd stowed his Mach Driver, and without consciously thinking about it, he idly flipped it open. The Break Gunner was stored next to the Driver, although he didn't remember placing it there. Chase ran a finger over it, remembering the last time he'd used it. He'd come to hate fighting as Mashin Chaser, once he'd gotten a copy of the Mach Driver, hated the inhuman form that he'd been given, but he'd used it one last time in an attempt to save Go's life. Given that Go was alive, it had apparently worked, but that didn't mean Chase wanted to use the Break Gunner again. And yet, here it was.

"You ready?" Go's voice was slightly muffled by his helmet, and Chase snapped the cover of the storage compartment closed without knowing exactly why he felt as though he had to hide its contents.

"Ready," he said. Go didn't seem to notice what Chase was doing, simply wheeling his bike toward the road. "I'm surprised," Chase added. "That the special investigation unit is still operational."

"Oh, it's not," Go said. "I just, ah, borrowed the Drive Pit. It's not like the school is using it."

"You broke in," Chase said.

"I have a key," Go said defensively. "It's not like I picked the locks."

Chase shook his head slowly. "Shame on you, Shijima Go," he said, and Go finally figured out that Chase was teasing him. He responded with a slow smile that twisted something around inside, and Chase touched his chest surreptitiously before following Go down the street.


	3. Go: Higher

Dinner was awkward.

Go hadn't expected his sister to feed him, hadn't expected Shin to put a glass in front of him as though he were finally an adult even though he had technically been an adult for nearly a year and a half, hadn't expected him to do the same for Chase. Chase had taken one sip of the beer, made a face at either the carbonation or the taste that Go was fairly sure only he saw, and carried out a credible impression of someone consuming a drink without ever actually emptying the glass over the course of the entire evening.

Part of the reason for how weird everything was, Go was sure, was because even though they'd all worked together, he hadn't spent much time with his sister's husband that hadn't involved hunting Roidmudes at first, and after that he'd been too focused on getting Chase back to waste time with distractions. Chase didn't help matters, either.

Go overcompensated, knowing he was too loud, too enthusiastic, utterly losing track of what he was talking about and dragging Chase to the forefront at every opportunity. Shin matched him, after a while, and Go pretended not to see his sister casting concerned glances in his direction when she thought he wasn't looking.

By the time the evening was finally over, and Go had collected his keys from the driver service which had taken his bike back to his apartment and closed the door on the outside world, he was exhausted all over again. Chase was staring at him, expression unreadable.

"Did you want to find your own place?" Go didn't want Chase to go somewhere else.

"Do friends live together?" Chase returned, after a moment of silence that went on far too long.

"Sometimes," Go said. "Not often." He hesitated. "But it would be harder for you, like it was for me when I first got here. Kiriko had to co-sign for me, because I didn't have a work history here."

"Work history," Chase repeated. "This is what humans do."

"Oh, fuck." Go rubbed his eyes. "Tomorrow, okay? We'll talk about it tomorrow. You stay here for a while. You just got back. We'll work it out later and you can just. You can stay. I want you to stay."

"All right." Chase inclined his head fractionally, and Go wasn't sure what, exactly, had just happened.

"I'm going to bed. Do you, ah, do you need to sleep?" He knew perfectly well that Chase needed to shut down periodically to allow his self-repair routines to handle the wear and tear of day to day activities, but the question slipped out anyway.

"I will be fine," Chase said, which wasn't an answer.

"Take the bed." Go pointed. "We'll pick up something for you to sleep on tomorrow." He didn't have a spare futon, but he could use the quilt from the kotatsu for one night. It would be fine.

Chase looked at him for a moment. "Thank you," he said, before walking into the living room and sitting down crosslegged in the corner farthest from the sliding doors. "Good night," he added, resting his hands on his lap.

"What," Go said, but Chase had apparently already shut down. "I can't even," he said, and decided it wasn't worth the argument to be a good host. If Chase wanted to sleep on the floor in the corner, Go wasn't going to stop him.

Morning brought the promise of sunlight visible through the bedroom window, even facing north and shaded by the access porch running the length of the building as it was. Go crawled out of bed, scrubbing his fingers through his hair, and went to find Chase.

Chase was gone.

"Breathe," Go muttered to himself. The bike was parked in front of the apartment, when Go went to look, which probably meant that Chase had just decided to wander around. "Stop being ridiculous."

Go scrawled a quick note and left it on the kitchen table, pocketing his keys and going for a run. It had been one of the few things that had kept him even-keeled and reasonable while he'd been trying to put Chase back together, and now that he knew he'd succeeded, it was pure joy. Not having spent much time at his apartment, Go wasn't particularly familiar with the surrounding area. He paid attention to it now, losing himself in the rhythm of feet striking the pavement, keeping his body loose. There were a few places to practice tricks more complicated than simple running, he was pleased to see.

Chase's bike was gone when Go returned, and he pushed down the urge to drop everything and search for him. "We're getting him a phone," Go said out loud, staring at the empty space. One of his neighbors, a woman Go knew by sight but not by name, gave him a wide berth as she exited the building. Go smiled and waved, but that didn't help. He rolled his eyes when he was sure she was no longer looking and jogged up the stairs.

Chase still hadn't returned by the time Go showered, dressed, and finished a few hours on the laptop working, nor was he anywhere to be seen when Go wrestled a set of boxes up the stairs that purported to have all the pieces necessary to construct another low bed. It wasn't until Go had seriously considered calling Shin and asking him to put out an APB on their missing friend that Chase knocked on the front door.

"You don't have to knock," Go said, annoyed and relieved at the same time. "You can just come in."

"I don't have a key," Chase pointed out, quite reasonably.

"Well, it's too late to make one for you now. Where did you even go?" Keys went onto the list of things Chase needed to get, along with a phone. Go eyed the purple jacket and decided that clothes were the third item.

"My driver's license expired," Chase said, producing the license he'd worked hard to get, and then holding up an entirely new one. "I have been driving illegally."

"It's fine," Go said, taking the new one and looking it over. The new license had Go's address on it, which begged the question of how Chase had pulled that particular stunt off. Shin, probably, Go decided. "I have something for you to sleep on," he said, handing the card back.

Chase, upon prompting, looked into the bedroom to see the still-unopened boxes on the floor. "Thank you," he said, dubiousness radiating outward from every pore.

Go laughed. "I didn't know if you wanted to set it up to sleep in here, or in the living room," he said. "I don't use either one much."

Chase turned toward him, appearing to give the matter grave consideration. "If the bedroom is acceptable and appropriate, then I believe it should be set up there," he said.

Fitting both beds into the single small room was difficult; Go eventually shoved his under the window and set Chase's parallel to it, so that the closet door was still reachable and the door to the room wasn't blocked. There was barely enough space to walk around the furniture, which was an oddly welcome change from the near-sterility of the rest of the apartment.

At one point, while Go was swearing at one of the screws that didn't fit properly into the pre-drilled hole, Chase asked innocently whether most people didn't just roll out a futon at night and store it during the day, which Go answered with his having gotten used to not sleeping on the floor while living overseas, which then led to explaining that different countries had different standards for normal. Chase looked dismayed.

"But," he said. "But you're all human."

"Well, sure." The screw finally slotted into place, and Go tightened it with a vindictive sense of satisfaction. "But not all humans are the same. Not even here."

Chase opened his mouth and then closed it again. "But," he said again, and fell silent.

Go grinned. "It's a big world. Lots of neat stuff. Interesting people."

Chase's reactions to the wide world of fascinating people were even more fun the next day; he hadn't had much experience with anything not directly related to the Roidmudes, and Go thoroughly enjoyed watching him suffer through a sales pitch for a one of several overpriced smartphones. The whole experience was improved by Chase figuring out both that Go wasn't going to help and that he knew exactly what he needed. None of which was what the salesperson was trying to sell him.

Chase left with a working phone on Go's account and a disgruntled salesperson nonetheless smiling a polite goodbye. "Why," Chase said after a moment.

"Hang on." There was a coffee shop a few stores down, and Go steered them inside. Chase took his coffee black, and Go with copious amounts of sugar; once they were seated at the only empty indoor table, Go pulled Chase's phone out of the box and started setting it up. "Why what?" he asked, adding contacts into Chase's phone book.

"Why the whole process?"

"Oh, now you want me to explain capitalism." Shin got added to Chase's contact list, along with Kiriko, and the rest of the former special investigation team, as well as Go himself.

"Capitalism." Go could all but see Chase searching through his memories for the definition of the word, and attempted to forestall him before he began to explain it. "So I will need to work," Chase said, which was not what Go was expecting.

Go hadn't thought about it. "I mean, I guess?"

"Do you work?" Chase looked dubious when asking, and Go laughed.

"You've seen my camera," he said. "I take pictures and sell them. I record videos, too, for the internet."

"What should I do?"

For a moment, Go thought Chase was joking, but he was apparently entirely serious about the prospect of work. Part of the human experience, Go supposed. "Ask Shin," he suggested, and was relieved when Chase dropped the subject.

Copying a set of keys for the apartment took less time than finding a set of appropriate keychains for Chase; Go felt that something decorative was appropriate, whereas Chase apparently simply wanted to hook his new keys onto the key to the Ride Chaser and leave it at that. Go won the argument when he found a dusty plastic figure of Chase himself, as Kamen Rider Chaser, in the back of a small souvenir shop. He found one of Mach, too, which Chase insisted on buying.

Mach went onto Chase's keys, while the Chaser figurine decorated Go's.

"They are a set," Chase said, utterly serious. Go, who felt he'd lost the high ground regarding decorative keys when his own had been demonstrated to be unadorned, shrugged and agreed. He brushed the dust off of the little Chaser doll, smiling at it.

Clothes shopping went spectacularly poorly; Go knew exactly what he liked and where to get it. Chase had no idea what he wanted, and Go had zero patience, which was how he found himself on his sister's doorstep.

"You know I have a job, right," Kiriko said, once again balancing Eiji on her hip.

"It's Saturday," Go hazarded, fairly sure he was correct. It was the first weekend in January, he was almost certain.

"And a husband. And a child." Kiriko stood back to let them both enter.

"I'll clean the apartment? And watch Eiji? Please?" Go drew out the word. "He's driving me crazy. And he can't wear that all the time."

"Crazy?" Chase had snuck up on Go while he wasn't paying attention, and Go tripped over the step up into the apartment proper and went sprawling on the floor.

"You don't know what you want and I don't know what you want and Kiriko is better at this than I am." Go flopped over onto his back. "It's not because she's a woman, either. She's just good at everything."

Chase opened his mouth. Kiriko cut him off. "The apartment doesn't need cleaning, except for the floors, and the bathtub. Eiji goes down for a nap in an hour. Feed him the container with today's date before he goes to sleep."

Go nodded. "Done and done."

"Heat it up first," Kiriko said. "Make sure it's not too hot before you give it to him."

Go would have protested that he knew how not to damage a baby, but it was the first time he was actually going to be alone with his nephew. "Where's Shin?"

"Working overtime." Kiriko frowned. "Something came up last night, and he had to leave early this morning."

"Ah." Go climbed to his feet and held out his hands. He could take care of an eight month old for a few hours. Definitely. No problem. The suddenly dubious look his sister was giving him wasn't helping. "I got this," he said, and then Kiriko had to show him exactly how to hold the kid.

The few hours until his sister and his best friend returned were the longest of Go's life. When Kiriko finally came back, Go had held up his end of the deal by the skin of his teeth. He hadn't been able to get Eiji to stay quiet in his own bed, and Kiriko took one look at him and started laughing quietly.

"He wouldn't stop crying," Go stage-whispered. He was trapped on the floor next to the couch, Eiji silently asleep across his chest. "How do you get him to stay quiet?"

Kiriko somehow managed to not only lift the baby off of Go without waking him, but vanished into the bedroom and returned baby-free without so much as a peep from what Go was all but certain was a small demon in human form and not an actual human being. "Practice," she said. As if on cue, Eiji started to cry. Kiriko sighed. "Sometimes luck," she said. "Excuse me."

"Thank you. I love you. Bye." Go dragged Chase out of his sister's apartment by the wrist, barely stopping to put his shoes on properly before they both made it down to the street. Chase was still wearing the purple outfit, although there were a few packages promisingly strapped to the Ride Chaser. Go opted to further their escape rather than ask about the shopping trip, letting Chase catch up with him.

"Your sister is very efficient," Chase said when they reached home and Go cut the engine.

"Of course she is." Kiriko was the entire reason Shin got anything done, Go did not say. She'd been the most constant part of his own life, after their father had left and their mother had died. She was the most efficient and competent person Go knew. "Wait, what did she make you buy?"

Go had not, at any point after returning to Japan, thought that he would need more closet space. The apartment he'd rented – technically not within Tokyo city limits, which made it not particularly conveniently located to anything, but at least it was cheaper – had a bedroom, and a living room, and a kitchen. Despite knowing how efficiently space could be used, it had taken him several days to find all of the closets; the one behind the kitchen door he never closed had escaped his notice for an embarrassingly long time.

Kiriko had not only bought Chase normal-person clothes, she'd made sure he would be prepared for a wide range of social situations. Go himself didn't own half of what Kiriko had gotten to outfit Chase. And fitting it into the bedroom closet required some creative storage, since the bedroom closet was horizontally bisected by the same type of sturdy shelf that graced the living room storage space.

"What the hell, Kiriko," Go muttered. She'd even bought pajamas.

"Your sister is very efficient," Chase repeated, and unzipped his jacket.

"What – what are you doing?" Go had forgotten, if he'd ever known, that Chase didn't actually have a shirt under his customary jacket. Whether that was because he didn't feel he needed one or was simply unaware that most people wore shirts under jackets – and since any shirt wouldn't be seen, it was irrelevant whether or not it was there – Go had no idea.

Chase fixed him with a look that said Go was asking ridiculous questions. "Changing my clothes," he said, jacket half off.

Go pulled his eyes away from Chase's bare chest, suddenly strongly reminded of the incident that had resulted in the majority of the data responsible for rebuilding Chase's core. Hypnos, an AI system created to help program the Roidmudes, had pulled the data out of Go's subconscious. It had done it by putting Go into a lucid dream and extracting the data from the background while Go moved through the dream; it had gone wrong, of course, given that Banno had been Hypnos' original creator and had left a nasty subroutine buried in Hypnos' programming, but it had worked out as planned in the end. The point that had currently struck Go between the eyes was the content of the lucid dream.

He'd taken Chase to an amusement park, a movie, and finally a café; if Chase had imprinted on a woman instead of the very male Kano Koichi, Go would have sworn blind that he was taking Chase on a date. As it was, he'd asked Hypnos what, exactly, the AI thought it had been doing. Hypnos had retorted that all it did was put Go into a dream state, and that Go himself was directing everything that happened.

Go hadn't wanted to accept that as an explanation, and had rationalized that perhaps he just wanted to show Chase aspects of a normal, human life; it was far easier to accept than Hypnos' nonchalant statement that if they were on a date, clearly Go wanted them to be on a date. He'd clung to it, over the past few months, through his attempted relationship with Reiko spectacularly falling apart over his dedication to reviving Chase, through every obstacle that told him he should let the sleeping dead lie, and now that Chase was casually undressing in front of him, Go found it very difficult to hold on to his hasty justification.

"Could you," he said, voice suddenly thick. He cleared his throat. "You're not supposed to just strip in front of your friends," he said, and even though Chase was between him and the bedroom door, Go made it out of the room without so much as brushing up against his nominal friend.

The living room was too hot, and Go slid the balcony door open. Outside was freezing, but he didn't care. He slipped outside, closing the door behind him and making sure the curtains were still drawn. He had to fight with them, the heavy folds of cloth seeming to impede his escape with willful intent, but finally he made it onto the narrow ledge with the door firmly closed and no one able to see him in the dark. Probably.

Go leaned on the balcony railing, dropping his head to his folded arms. He didn't want to sleep with Chase, absolutely not. What he'd done with Ethan, in the United States, in the brief time before he'd been recruited to test the Mach system, that had been experimentation. Everyone did that. It didn't mean anything. It didn't mean he wanted to do the same thing with Chase. He isn't even human, Go told himself, and then immediately felt ashamed that he was insulting his best friend, even if it was inside the privacy of his own head.

"Chase was in love with Kiriko," Go said under his breath. "Keep that in mind before you do something stupid." Chase, for all that he had been literally built and programmed, had more of a handle on what was appropriate than Go did. Go wasn't about to confuse him; Chase had enough trouble as it was. Go certainly had no desire to pursue anything of a romantic nature with Chase, he told himself, so there was absolutely no reason to worry about it. Just to make it perfectly clear, he was going to take Chase out to the same activities that had been in his dream. Just to prove that he wanted to show Chase what living like a human was and nothing more.

What Go meant to say the next morning was Let's go to Disney Sea. That would be the first part of the plan; the movie and the café would be the following day, because there was no point in going to Disney without spending the entire day there. What he actually said was, "We should break into Nara Dreamland Park."

Chase, looking far too alert for Go's peace of mind, frowned at him. Go had woken to find Chase's bed neatly made and Chase in the kitchen, sitting in front of Go's closed laptop. When Go had walked through the door, yawning, Chase had reached over and pressed the start button on the coffee maker, and Go had tried to suggest a theme park. "I was under the impression that theme parks were entered by buying tickets," Chase said, finally.

Go rubbed his eyes, finally noticing that Chase was wearing trendily ripped jeans under a loose purple shirt. "It's abandoned," he said. There was a slit up the side of the shirt, and Go had the impression that if Chase raised his arms high enough, the slit would ride up above the waist of his jeans. He stopped looking at it and went to find a coffee cup. Given that the kitchen was almost narrow enough for him to touch both walls while standing in the middle, he didn't have to go far.

"You want to break into an abandoned amusement park," Chase said.

"It has a traditional wooden roller coaster." That should have been enough of an explanation; Go had considered it as a place to practice lighting and composition in a static environment, and maybe film a video of climbing the coaster in question; it depended on how dynamic he could make the footage look. Nara was a little too far away from Tokyo and the Drive Pit, though, and he'd tabled it.

"Why is that significant?" The ends of Chase's sleeves were just a little too long, and it gave him an air of being innocent and vulnerable when Go knew perfectly well that he was neither one, and that Chase absolutely did not need to be protected. Although given that Chase's last act had been one of self-sacrifice, there was something to be said for standing between Chase and any potential threat. "Go?" Chase prompted, and Go realized that he'd been staring, empty cup in hand, for longer than he should have been.

"Because wooden roller coasters are awesome," he said. "And it'll be fun."

Go was absolutely not avoiding Disney because theme parks were traditionally a romantic date sort of activity, not when he'd decided to bring Chase to a theme park to show himself how much he did not want to date Chase. He filled the coffee cup and added sugar. Chase did not look convinced by Go's argument in favor of technically illegal activity.

"There's something interesting about an abandoned area," Go said. "Lost potential."

"What could have been," Chase said, tilting his head to the side. "I understand."

Go had no idea what it was that Chase thought he'd understood, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. "I'll get dressed."

Chase was looking at his shiny new phone when Go emerged from the bedroom, feeling slightly more awake. "It is four hours by train," he said, and he'd learned to use the phone quickly.

"We'll take the bikes," Go objected, but apparently that would take considerably longer, which was how he found himself sitting in a bullet train heading west on an impulse.

Sneaking into the park was easy. Kiriko had chosen a dark jacket for Chase – Go was absolutely certain Chase had had nothing to do with the decision making process – and Go knew enough about being inconspicuous while trying to reach a location that his red and white coat drew no attention. It didn't take long to get beyond the sight of the guard, and then they were within the park proper.

Most of the space was taken up with smaller rides, a European-inspired main street, a carousel; none of it particularly interesting. It was surprisingly clean, for a place that had been closed for over a decade. Go tried some of the doors, just out of curiosity, but they were all locked, and he didn't think it was worth it to break in. Chase followed him, expressionless, as Go climbed on the carousel, camera in hand.

"Sit," Go told him, and Chase finally blinked.

Go posed Chase on the carousel, in the teacups, and on the roofs of the locked buildings – which were ridiculously easy to climb up on top of, even if they were locked from the inside – before they got to the wooden roller coaster. Chase was hesitant at first, clearly unsure why Go was photographing him.

"Trust me," Go said. Chase's lack of expression came across as wistful, in the photographs, the ideal counterpoint to the abandoned landscape, and Go had done enough work with models to give Chase the right direction to get the most out of the lighting they had left. It was nearly dark, by the time Go was staring up the wooden frame of the roller coaster for which the park had been famous.

"It is made of wood," Chase said.

"What, you thought I was joking?" Go slapped him lightly on the shoulder. "I think we came here once when I was really little," he said. "Kiriko would remember."

"You do not?"

Go shrugged. "Memories are weird. Sometimes you think you remember something, but it didn't really happen. Or sometimes you remember it differently."

"I remember everything," Chase said. "Exactly as it happens."

"Yeah, well, that's just part of –" Go paused. "Part of who you are," he finished. Chase not being human didn't mean that he was less, just that he was different. It had taken Go far too long to understand that. "Chase," he said suddenly. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Most people would have looked wary, at an apology coming out of the blue. Chase simply looked expectant, waiting for an explanation.

"I said some things to you," Go said. He couldn't look Chase in the eyes, his gaze getting as far as Chase's shoulder and getting stuck there. "Things I shouldn't have said." It was unexpectedly difficult. "When I said that you and I couldn't – couldn't be friends, because you weren't human. That was cruel, and I'm sorry."

"But I'm not human," Chase said.

"That doesn't mean you're not a person." Go finally managed to look his friend in the face, afraid of what he was going to see, but Chase didn't look angry or hurt. He just looked like Chase, calm and unruffled. "You're important to me. You're the most important person to me, except maybe for my sister. I want you to know that."

"Thank you," Chase said, after what seemed like a very long pause. "I do not take such a position lightly."

For a moment, Go was overwhelmingly disappointed that Chase hadn't returned the sentiment, but the feeling vanished as quickly as it had come, and he found himself laughing. Chase's confused look just made him laugh harder, and he tried to explain. "Most people," he said, when he'd finally gotten control of his breathing back, "most people say something along the lines of 'I care about you too.'" What he'd intended to say was that he understood that Chase, as a Roidmude, didn't technically have emotions.

"But you already know that I care about you," Chase said, and the words hit Go like a blow to the chest. Of course he knew. Chase had died for Go. "I didn't only protect you because of Kiriko."

Go could only stare at him, mouth hanging slightly open. He closed it with a snap, turning toward the wooden frame standing in the beginnings of twilight. "So the view from the top of this has to be spectacular," he said, and started looking for a way up.

The wooden frame was easy to climb, and Go went more rapidly than he might have otherwise. He could hear Chase following him, and he was absolutely not running away from his friend. He just wanted to be able to photograph the view from the top of the wooden framework before the light vanished entirely. That was all.

Without warning, Go's hand slipped, and he swung outward, feet flailing. He reached for the handhold again, but he couldn't close his fingers on it, and he couldn't find purchase with his feet. He was going to die, falling off of a stupid rollercoaster in an abandoned theme park, after he'd survived being a Kamen Rider. It was ridiculous. He could feel his one remaining grip slipping, and then there was a hand pushing his foot firmly onto a ledge and that gave him enough leverage to grab the framework with both hands and hold on.

"You should be more careful," Chase said from below him, because of course he hadn't slipped.

"Thanks," Go said, and kept moving upward.

The highest point of the roller coaster was easily accessible, once they reached the ascending part of the track, and Go waved Chase to stand on it. He clambered onto the railing on the side, so that he could get a shot of Chase and the view from above. Chase eyed him, clearly concerned now. It was going to ruin the photo.

"Try to look less upset." Go moved back off the railing and circled around to Chase's other side. It was nearly too dark to get anything useful, and he readjusted the camera. "Smile."

He climbed on the railing again, holding up the camera; he couldn't quite see the details of the shot, only just enough to frame it properly. Or so he hoped. Chase smiled at him, just the tiniest curl of his lips upward, and Go smiled back. He closed the lens, tucking the camera inside his coat and zipping it up again, before hopping off the railing. He misjudged the landing.

The wooden slat that was supposed to take half of his weight took all of it as Go's other foot landed on nothing at all and he tilted outward toward the yawning chasm below for the second time. He reached forward, arms windmilling in an attempt to halt his own descent, and felt himself begin to fall. Only pure luck let him hook one knee over the low railing that hadn't been enough to stop him from going over it, but he could hear it crack under the sudden strain as he swung, upside down, over a steep drop.

"Go!" Chase darted forward, but the railing cracked again, more loudly, and Chase stumbled to a halt.

The aged wood was about to give way, the decade without maintenance having worn it more badly than it had seemed. Go held perfectly still, only turning his head. One of the wooden crossbeams was within reach, and he carefully stretched out an arm.

"Go," Chase said again, more frantically.

"Just hold still," Go snapped. He had a solid grip on the crossbeam with one hand, but it angled too far down for him to grip it with the other. "Don't move. I've got this."

Before he'd spent so much time neglecting himself in his attempts to restore Chase, before he'd spent months doing almost nothing except running and staring at lines upon lines of code, Go would have had no doubts in his own agility. Now, he could feel the strain already. But if Chase tried to grab him and pull him back, and failed, Go would only end up dragging Chase over the edge. He couldn't do that.

"I know what to do," he said, and swung off the breaking railing. The next few seconds were a blur of rapidly shifting gravity and adrenaline, and Go was never quite sure afterwards how he had pulled it off, but he ended up clinging to the support rail, both legs wrapped firmly around it as the last few splinters rained off the broken rail above him.

"Go!" Chase shouted, face appearing over the edge, white in the gathering dark.

"I'm okay, I'm okay." Go couldn't quite make himself let go of the support strut, not even when Chase extended a hand downward. "Just a second." His camera pressed against his sternum, and Go felt at it carefully. It didn't seem broken from outside his jacket, but it would have to be carefully examined once they'd gotten off the rollercoaster and into somewhere with good lighting. If Go had nearly died getting pictures of Chase at the top of an abandoned rollercoaster and then lost the pictures, he was going to be extremely upset.

"Go," Chase said for the third time, and Go reached upward to grab his friend's hand.

He made it onto the track without incident, and lay flat on his back staring at the now navy-blue sky. His heart pounded against his chest, and Chase stared down at him worriedly.

"Don't die," he said.

"I'm not dying, I just need to breathe." Go sat up, reaching inside his jacket. The camera still felt intact. He zipped it up again, glad that the camera hadn't simply fallen out while he was dangling upside down. "Come on."

"Perhaps we should wait up here until it is light enough to see," Chase said.

"It's cold. I will literally freeze to death." Go wasn't quite sure that was true, but he had no desire to wait out the long January night on top of a roller coaster with no protection from the elements. Chase might not be uncomfortable in the cold – Go had no idea – but Go wasn't about to die from exposure. "Besides, we just walk down. Easy."

Chase gave him the most unimpressed look Go had seen all day, clear even in the half dark.

"Really," Go said, and climbed to his feet more carefully than he'd done anything on the roller coaster so far. He stopped himself from grinning smugly at Chase when they reached a point low enough to simply jump off of, no more than a meter and a half high, and Go landed perfectly with his knees bent. Chase dropped to the ground beside him, dusting off his hands, and still giving him what Go thought was an excessively dubious glare.

"Come on, we're fine," Go said. The adrenaline still hadn't faded, and he couldn't stand still. "There's one more thing to look at, come on." Without giving Chase the chance to object, he struck off toward the only structure they hadn't wandered around.

The entrance to the tunnel of horror was pitch dark, and Go pulled out his cell phone. A flashlight would have been useful, he thought, but his phone was bright enough. Chase stood at the entrance, apparently having no desire to go inside.

"Last thing," Go said, turning around. He had to keep moving, and he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. "It's even on flat ground. No chance of anything horrible happening, look."

"I do not wish to go inside," Chase said, and it suddenly became very important that Chase follow him through the final attraction.

"Come on," Go said again. "It's not going to be scary."

"That is not the point." Chase folded his arms. "You appear to be suffering an adverse reaction to nearly falling off the rollercoaster. Twice."

"You know what?" Go flung his arms out to the side. "Fine. Fine. You want to leave, we'll leave." He was shouting by the end of the sentence, and the sudden appearance of a flashlight startled him. The security guard had finally noticed that someone had snuck into the park and was running toward them.

"Leaving seems like a good idea," Chase said, but Go was already running and Chase was right behind him before the second syllable had left his mouth.

It wasn't difficult to lose the guard in the dark, but Go didn't stop until they'd gotten back over the fence and down the road toward the train station. It wasn't too late to start back home, but he stopped just before reaching the lights of the business district, breathing harder than the run demanded, bent half over with his hands on his knees.

"Go?" Chase said uncertainly.

Go started laughing, the fact that he'd just survived falling off of a wooden rollercoaster twice finally hitting home. "That was amazing," he said, straightening up and reaching toward Chase. Without thinking about it, he pulled Chase toward him and kissed him hard on the mouth. Chase froze, not responding at all. Go released him, backing away, heart sinking straight into his stomach. "I – I'm sorry," he said, and started walking rapidly toward the train station.

"Go," Chase said again, an entirely different note of uncertainty in his voice.

Go waved him off. "It didn't happen. Just. Pretend it didn't happen. Nothing happened."

Chase wasn't – Go made himself uncurl his hands, straightening his fingers and trying not to look like he'd just ruined something. Chase had pursued Kiriko, when he'd thought he wanted a romantic connection with someone. When he'd sacrificed himself to save Go's life, he'd even said it – he wanted to protect someone Kiriko cared about. Go wasn't going to force himself where he wasn't wanted; Chase hadn't responded, and that was as good as saying no.

The train station wasn't exactly crowded, but there were enough people there to make having a personal conversation incredibly awkward. Go hadn't thought about Chase's propensity for ignoring what was socially acceptable, even if he knew to begin with.

"What," Chase started, as they were standing on the platform, surrounded by who weren't paying attention to them now but definitely would if Go let Chase keep talking.

"That's not something friends do, okay," Go said, trying to be reassuring. "It's not going to happen again. Ever."

Chase still looked uncertain, but he nodded and stepped farther away from Go. Go wished it felt less awkward, less like he was ripping a hole in his own chest, but he was the one who kept falling for all the wrong people. Irony of ironies, the person he'd fallen for this time wasn't even a person, and it was still all wrong.

The trip back toward Tokyo was silent; Go had thought, at first, that they would spend more than just the single day out in Nara, but that had been before he'd screwed everything up. He had no right to isolate Chase from everything he knew, not after this, not even for a few days. Chase kept looking at him out of the corner of his eyes, but Go resolutely ignored it, and by the time their last train pulled into the station, Chase had given up.

The station was within walking distance of Go's apartment, and he stopped when they reached the parking lot. "I can sleep at Kiriko's, until we find you your own space," he said, trying to give Chase enough space not to feel threatened. The last thing he wanted was for Chase to think Go was going to be pushy, to insist on something Chase didn't want.

Chase tilted his head to the side. "Why would I want you to do that?" he asked, and Go couldn't tell if he meant the question or not.

"If you, I don't know. If you want some space." He had the helmet in his hands already, holding onto it tightly.

"I like having you around," Chase said, and something unlocked in Go's chest. He let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"You really don't mind?" he said.

"It's your home," Chase said. "If anyone is going to leave, it should be me." He paused. "But I don't want to."

"Okay," Go said, his knees going momentarily weak with relief. "Okay." He hadn't ruined everything after all. "Let's, uh. Let's go upstairs." The mostly-empty apartment had never seemed so welcoming.

Chase was gone again when Go woke the next morning, along with his bike, and Go suppressed the automatic panicky assumption that he'd driven Chase away after all. He texted a smiley face, to which Chase replied with a photo of himself wearing some sort of uniform.

Did you get a job while I wasn't looking, Go texted.

Yes, Chase replied, followed immediately by It is inappropriate for me to use my phone while at work.

Go had no idea what kind of job Chase was even doing, which turned out to be the normal state of the universe for long enough that he thought Chase might actually be playing some sort of elaborate practical joke. Go managed to set up four gigs as a photographer, edit and publish the photos of Chase in Nara on his personal blog, and film a first person parkour-from-roof-to-roof just to demonstrate that it was, in fact, entirely possible while Chase apparently held down a different job for no more than two shifts in a row at any given company.

"None of this is enjoyable," Chase said three weeks into his apparent foray into the world of adult responsibilities and bill-paying.

Go, who was editing the same picture for an extremely picky bride for the sixth time, blinked and looked up. "It's not supposed to be fun," he said. "It's work."

"You think your job is fun," Chase said, apparently referring to the rooftop video. He'd been playing it on repeat for the last hour, sound turned off.

"Part of my job is fun," Go said. "Part of my other job is ridiculous." It wasn't his fault that the bride had wanted a Western wedding and had gotten a Shinto ceremony; there was no amount of editing that he could do to make her pictures look like something they weren't. "Why don't you work with Shin?"

It seemed like it would be a perfectly reasonable progression; Chase had started life out as a Kamen Rider, after all, handling threats and catching villains.

"He'd probably be happy to help you get started." Go gave up on the picture and sent the final edit back to the client with the most politely worded message he could. It was barely past noon, but he was absolutely done for the day. The client had been referred to him through a loosely organized temp agency, and Go was tempted to refuse future work that came to him through the agency in question. Somehow, every client he'd booked with them had been ridiculously high-maintenance.

"I do not wish to engage in conflict," Chase said, and that was surprising.

Go leaned back, twisting around in his chair to look through the living room door, forgetting about the temp agency entirely. "Wait, what?"

"All I have ever done is fight," Chase said slowly. "Fight, and punish, and destroy. I want to make things better instead."

The front of Go's chair hit the floor with a thump. "Wow." He pushed it back and stretched, climbing out to drop to the floor next to where Chase was sitting with his legs under the kotatsu. The heater under the table was off, and Go reached for the controls to turn it on. Trust Chase to perform a human action while having no idea why he was doing it. "You know there's a heater in here," he said. "Which is why you sit under it."

"I know that," Chase said. "I wasn't cold."

Go didn't have an answer for that one. "So you want to help people," he said, returning to the previous topic. "Being a Kamen Rider helped people. The police help people."

"I don't want to fight," Chase said. "Only if I have to."

"Huh." Go scooted around until he could slide his legs under the blanket on the other side of the table; it wasn't big enough for two people to fit on the same side unless they were extremely friendly, and he had been very careful not to touch Chase in a way that would be unwelcome. "I mean, that's totally okay," he said, when Chase started looking nervous.

"Is there a reason it wouldn't be okay?" Chase said.

Go dropped his head to the table. "You can do whatever you want," he said, feeling like he'd missed something important but having no idea what it was or how to get back to it. "You should do what you want," he added.

"Nothing I've done has seemed like it was helping people," Chase said, and he looked so despondent that Go desperately wanted to hug him to make it go away.

"You'll find something eventually," he said. "Did you talk to Shin? Or Kiriko? Rinna? Kyu, maybe," he said, when it occurred to him that sending Chase to talk to people exclusively associated with the police about What Do You Want To Be when Chase was specifically rejecting law enforcement was possibly a bad idea.

"Would that be helpful?" Chase didn't quite perk up, but he looked slightly less miserable.

"It might," Go said. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out with a frown.

Shinnosuke needs your help, read the text message from Kiriko, followed by an address. Bring Chase. And the Mach Drivers.

"What," Go said, already on his feet and typing back. Roidmudes?

"What is it?" Chase had stood as well, following a click that Go belatedly identified as the kotatsu being turned off so as not to burn down the apartment building while they weren't in it.

"Do you still have the Mach Driver?" Go asked, and Chase nodded once. Go's Driver was stored in the Ride Macher, but he had no idea where Chase kept his, not that it mattered. "You're going to need it," he said, stuffing his feet into his shoes and barely waiting for Chase to follow him before closing and locking the door. His phone buzzed again, and Go read the second text on the way down the stairs.

Shinnosuke doesn't know. Maybe. Looks like.

"Why?" Chase asked.

"Roidmudes," Go said. "Shin needs our help." He checked the bike for the Driver, which was where he'd left it. For all that he hadn't touched it literally in years, it looked as though he'd just stored it in the Ride Macher yesterday. Chase's mouth flattened out to a thin line, and he nodded silently.

The altercation was no longer at the location Kiriko had sent, but it was loud enough that Go had no trouble finding it. Drive was facing down what looked like three Roidmudes, two of them huge and hulking and the third small and compact. As Go pulled up and killed his engine, the small Roidmude darted around Drive and shot him in the back. Drive went down, turning the momentum into a forward roll, but Go could tell that he was wavering.

"Hey!" he shouted, standing dramatically on top of the Ride Macher with both hands on his hips and the Mach Driver already around his waist. "The cavalry has arrived. Let's transform!"

The Driver announced the signal bike sliding home as Go posed with confidence and showmanship, drawing the attention of all three Roidmudes and letting Chase transform unnoticed. The armor settled around Go as the Driver gleefully spit out the word Rider, lighter than Go remembered and filling him with a heady rush of strength.

"Tracking," he said, flipping off the bike to land gracefully in front of it, "terminating – both done at mach speed!" The first of the hulking Roidmudes ran forward, surprisingly fast, and Go leapt over it. "Kamen Rider... Mach!"

He turned the leap into a double kick, smashing the Roidmude's neck with both heels and landing lightly on his hands. Go rolled to his feet again. The Roidmude had staggered but it hadn't gone down, and Go could see Chase at the edge of his field of vision facing off with one of the others while Drive pulled himself back together.

Wearing the armor felt like coming home. Go hadn't realized how much he'd missed it until he'd put it on again, grinning fiercely at his opponent even if it couldn't see his face. The Roidmude was massive, over two meters tall and too wide to fit through a door, and Go was fairly sure that if it hit him, it would literally break him into pieces.

"Aren't I lucky, then," he said to it, tumbling precisely under its attempted kick and standing up behind it to try to bring it down by hitting the backs of its knees. It was like hitting a tree without the benefit of the armor; the Roidmude didn't budge, and Go was within reach. The Roidmude pivoted to kick him in the ribs, taking the advantage that Go had known it would, and he barely managed to dodge. Just the bare edge of the Roidmude's assault was enough to send him sliding along the ground, but he came up on his feet with the Zenrin Shooter in hand.

There was no number on the Roidmude's chest, Go finally noticed. He'd been too close to really see the thing, but now that he was out of arm's reach and pointing a weapon at it, he could finally get a really good look at his opponent. It looked somehow unfinished, almost like a blank template of a Roidmude body that had gotten all the upgrades for speed and strength but none for mirroring human form or personality. The number plate on its chest was badly damaged, scorched as if in an explosion, in a complete contrast to the shiny newness of the rest of its parts.

"They're not using Heavy Acceleration," Drive shouted across the field, and Go blinked. None of the Roidmudes had tried to gain an upper hand by slowing down the events around them.

"Maybe they know it won't do them any good," he called back cheerfully, and while he was distracted, his opponent nearly flattened him.

Go flipped backwards with one hand, coming back upright with the Zenrin Shooter aimed directly at the Roidmude. He fired, and it staggered. Again, and he could see damage sparking across its torso. For a brief moment, Go was strongly reminded of Chase, before he'd resumed his human features, and the barrel of the Zenrin Shooter dropped.

The Roidmude rushed forward. Go clipped the Shooter onto his belt and stood his ground, ducking aside at the last second to punch the damaged area with all the strength he had. The Roidmude stopped, folding over, and Go hit it again. Sparks cascaded over his fist, and the Roidmude reached out to grab him by the throat.

Go felt himself lifted off the ground, and panicked for half a second at the sensation of his throat closing off. He grabbed the Roidmude by the wrist with both hands, trying to pry off its fingers, but they were just as strong as the rest of it and refused to budge.

"Fine," he ground out, or would have, if he'd been able to get any air at all. He swung his legs up, one foot on each side of the Roidmude's shoulder. His vision was sparkling at the edges, starting to go gray, and this was his last shot. With the last of his air, Go tightened his grip on the Roidmude's wrist, braced his feet, and pushed.

The Roidmude's arm tore most of the way free, attached to its body only by the thinnest of wires, and Go hit the ground hard. If he'd had any air left, it would have been driven out of his chest. He rolled over, pulling the Roidmude's arm off entirely, and had the satisfaction of seeing it drop to one knee. The arm was still gripping his throat, though, rigid even though unattached, and Go dug frantically at it.

The grip on his throat loosened just enough to allow him to breathe and Go sucked in a glorious lungful of air. The Roidmude was still down, its other arm working at the socket, stemming the flow of fluid. It was only a matter of time before it recovered. Go wrenched the thumb backward, hearing it break under his grip, and finally peeled the arm off his throat entirely. He panted, feeling the familiar pain of air rushing across his bruised throat."I hate getting choked," he said to the Roidmude.

It was climbing to its feet, but Go beat it there. He hit it across the jaw with its own arm, sending it back down, and then hit it again. The third time, the Roidmude caught the improvised club with its good arm, wrenching it out of Go's hands and swinging it right back. Go ducked again, pulling the Zenrin Shooter free and aiming for the empty socket. He missed, hitting the Roidmude's side instead. It rushed forward, wielding its own arm as a weapon.

"That is all sorts of wrong!" Go shouted at it, dodging and trying to hit it with the Shooter. He missed more often than he hit, but he finally managed to damage its leg enough to slow it down. "This isn't helping anyone," he muttered. He could see Chase crouched on top of a damaged Ride Crosser and squaring off against the smaller Roidmude only a few meters away, but Drive wasn't visible unless he took his eyes off his own opponent.

Go backed up, aiming the Zenrin Shooter again, and heard the distinctive sound of Drive's SpeeDrop coming from behind him and to his left. He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the third and final Roidmude vanish in a massive fireball. When the glare had faded, his opponent had vanished from the field; a quick glance around showed him that the Chase's opponent had vanished as well.

Drive straightened and released his transformation, armor dissolving to reveal a slightly rumpled and nonplussed Shin in his usual suit. Shin tightened his tie, tucking it back into his jacket with an air of irritation. Go could hear him talking to Krim, but neither Shin's words nor the belt's reply were audible. Go sighed and released his own transformation.

Losing the armor felt like a load of bricks had abruptly been strapped to Go's back and along his limbs. He stumbled slightly; using the armor had always felt exhausting, in the beginning, but he'd gotten used to it. A few months out of it and he'd managed to go right back to square one. He sighed and stretched; that was what he got for not paying more attention to his own physical training while he focused on bringing Chase back. "This is better, though," he said quietly to himself.

Shin jogged over, looking him up and down critically. "You okay?" he asked.

The question rubbed Go the wrong way, as if he couldn't take care of himself, as if he hadn't been backup for Shin as Drive for years. "Everything's fine," he said sharply, and the words caught on a brief flare of pain in his throat. Oh, right, the Roidmude had nearly choked him to death. He reached up, wincing. "Mostly fine," he amended.

Chase appeared at Shin's elbow, armor gone, his artfully distressed jeans significantly worse for the wear. Go noticed that his shirt had inexplicably escaped the damage, and then it registered that Chase was asking him the same question Shin had.

"I'm not the only one who got his ass kicked," he said, and looked over Chase's shoulder at the Ride Crosser. "Can I have my bike back now?"

"Ah," Chase said, and looked at the ground. The Roidmude had damaged the Ride Crosser worse than Go had thought; the two bikes couldn't be detached from each other, and there was only room for one to drive the machine.

"I'm beginning to feel like my bike being gone is a running joke," Go said, leaning on the Ride Crosser and banging his forehead on it in frustration. "What did I ever do to the universe that it keeps taking my bike away."

"The Drive Pit," Shin said, and Go peeled himself off the Ride Crosser to eye his brother-in-law. "All the tools are still there."

"I know," Go said. "I'm the one who broke into the vault to get them out." Not that Shin didn't know that already, but he'd been politely pretending Go had done no such thing since Go had tried to revive Chase the first time and gotten Heart instead.

"I can give you a ride back there," Shin offered. "If Chase wants to drive the Ride Crosser."

Go started to object that he could drive the Ride Crosser just as well as Chase could, but Chase had settled into its driver's seat when Go hadn't been paying attention. Go rolled his eyes, about to object just for the sake of being difficult when something that should have been his first thought only then occurred to him. "Where did they come from?" he asked.

Shin looked blankly at him for a moment and then his eyes widened in comprehension. "There were no numbers on their chests," he said, and Go snapped his fingers in agreement.

"Right?" He folded his arms. "The chestplate on mine was burned, but the rest of it looked new."

"Someone putting old Cores back together?" Shin frowned. "There isn't anyone left who knows how to do that. Especially not now that Medic is gone."

"Except me," Go felt compelled to point out. "And Rinna and Kyu." Shin fixed him with a granite stare that said Go wasn't funny. "I'm not joking," Go said. "I mean, we're not reviving Roidmudes, but I'm just saying. If we can do it, maybe someone else figured it out."

"This was supposed to be over," Shin said, one hand on the belt. It didn't look any happier about the situation than he did, for all that it wasn't saying anything.

"Maybe there were just the three," Go said. "And you destroyed one of them already."

"Whoever made those three can make more," Shin said firmly. "This means finding out where they came from. We have to get to the bottom of this."

Shin's we almost never included Go, when it came to investigative work; Go made a mental bet with himself whether or not Shin would actively try to include him in the rebuilt special investigation team. He was absolutely certain Shin would get permission for and then actively recruit the former members of said team, at least as a temporary unit; at least that would make accessing the Drive Pit easier.

Go glanced at Chase, who was patiently waiting in the damaged Ride Crosser. He had remained silent during the brief conversation, but now that Go was actively paying attention to him, he raised his hand in a sardonic little wave. The little smile that accompanied the wave was anything but sarcastic, though, and Go couldn't help smiling back.

"Are we going?" Chase said.

"Right." Go looked over the battlefield one more time; the area had been closed off for construction, at least, but any work that had been completed before their arrival had been undone now. A bright spot caught his eye. "Hang on," he said, and jogged over to it despite the leaden feeling still weighing down his limbs.

The brightness turned out to be part of the Roidmude's core, reflecting sunlight. Go turned it over in his hand, careful of the jagged edges. Shin was right behind him, inquisitive.

"Does it look, I don't know, weird to you?"

The core was broken into pieces, twisted by the explosion that had killed the Roidmude, but something about it still looked wrong. Go couldn't put his finger on it, but the feeling wouldn't go away. Shin shook his head. "Not particularly," he said.

"I'm going to ask Rinna and Kyu to take a look," Go said. "Mr. Belt, if you wouldn't mind looking, too…"

"I am always happy to lend my expertise to these matters," the belt said, which was a bald-faced lie. Krim was as human as the rest of them despite having downloaded his consciousness into the belt, which meant that he could be as cooperative or as uncooperative as anyone else. Go raised an eyebrow at him, but he wasn't sure that the belt registered it.

"Come on, then," Shin said, and Go picked his way back across the battlefield to Shin's car.


	4. Chase: Confession Song

Chase remembered the previous method of entering the Drive Pit, and he also remembered how he and Go had had to surreptitiously extract the Ride Macher and Ride Chaser once Chase had repaired and detailed them both shortly after Go had brought him back. It was easier, getting in when the Pit was authorized for use.

Given that Chase was reasonably sure the Drive Pit had been locked down, such as it was, before the fight, he could only assume that Shinnosuke had moved quickly in getting them authorization to go back. Chase wasn't exactly surprised, either, since the Roidmudes' reappearance was both unexpected and unwelcome to the people who had defeated them over two years before. They weren't supposed to come back; their creator had been killed, and the Roidmudes were supposed to stay dead with him.

The massive specimens that had squared off against both Go and Shinnosuke had had unanticipated levels of both speed and strength; Chase hadn't expected so much of either one, when they'd interrupted Drive's fight. The strength, perhaps, wasn't entirely outside the realm of reasonable possibility. Their speed, though, that had been something else. All three Roidmudes had been much faster than Chase would have guessed, particularly since there had been no Heavy Acceleration Field in evidence.

Chase had seen Go attempting to beat his opponent to death using its own arm, and the sight had brought a flare of warmth and hope. He'd been sure that he was going to be too late to save Go, when he'd seen his friend dangling with his feet half a meter off the ground in a chokehold, but Go had proved tough and resourceful. The added power the Mach suit had given him hadn't hurt either, Chase thought, though if he'd been asked, he wouldn't have predicted Go having enough strength to pull the Roidmude's arm clean off.

"I would miss you," he said softly, although Go was ahead of him in the passenger seat of Shinnosuke's car and couldn't hear a word of it. "I'm glad you're okay."

Shinnosuke parked in his usual spot in the center of the Drive Pit, which meant that the only way to reach clear floor space was to park the damaged Ride Crosser between Tridoron and the exit. His own opponent had been lethally quick, its lower mass giving it the advantage there, and Chase's only option had been to let it wear itself out; the Ride Crosser wasn't fast enough to keep up with the Roidmude, but it had given Chase enough protection to weather the Roidmude's overclocked assault. It hadn't been his intention to wait it out, but he also hadn't thought it would vanish when its comrade was destroyed.

The damage to the Ride Crosser was regrettable, though. Chase climbed off of it, pacing around it slowly to see exactly what needed to be done before the Ride Chaser and the Ride Macher could be separated.

Shinnosuke walked up behind him, letting out a low whistle. "Really did a number on it, huh?"

Chase looked behind him, but Go was nowhere to be seen. "Where's Go?"

Shinnosuke shrugged. "Asleep in the front seat. Suit wore him out, I think." He held up a hand when Chase started around him. "He's fine," he said. "He's breathing okay."

"Humans don't respond well to trauma to the throat," Chase said. "Swelling can commence minutes or hours later."

Shinnosuke eyed him. "Since when do you know first aid?"

Chase shrugged. "I've learned a lot of things," he said, which was, strictly speaking, true. He started around Shinnosuke again, but Shinnosuke took his shoulders and steered him back to the Ride Crosser.

"You know how to fix that, and I don't. I'll make sure my little brother doesn't choke to death in his sleep, and you separate the bikes."

Chase fixed him with what he knew was a baleful, expressionless stare, and Shinnosuke backed toward the Tridoron.

"I'm going, I'm going."

Part of Shinnosuke's Roidmude turned out to have wedged itself into a critical juncture, and once Chase removed it, separating the Ride Chaser from the Ride Macher would be fairly simple. He dropped the piece into a basin for later examination, although it wasn't a core piece and wasn't likely to yield any useful information. It appeared to be part of the base form for constructing a Roidmude body, much like Chase's own, even if it had come off of a Roidmude whose base form had been extensively modified.

"Find anything interesting?" Shinnosuke wandered over again, peering over Chase's shoulder.

"Go?" Chase said.

Shinnosuke threw up his hands. "He's fine. He's completely fine. Just asleep." He pointed to the padded bench against the back wall, not three meters away from where Chase had blocked the exit to the Drive Pit. "See?"

"There," Chase said, pointing to the basin. "That was preventing the separation." He triggered the separation, and the Ride Crosser disassembled itself into two somewhat battered motorcycles. "Though some repairs still need to be conducted."

Shinnosuke nodded. "Feel free to stay here as long as you need to," he said. "I have to go talk to the special investigation team."

"If the team has been reassembled, it would benefit from the addition of Go and myself," Chase said, returning his attention to the Ride Macher. It was less damaged than the Ride Chaser, and would require less time to repair.

"Actually, I was hoping you would both act as consultants," Shinnosuke said.

"Understood," Chase said. "Please keep me informed of your superiors' decision."

"But I need you to agree before I can suggest it to – oh. Well, then. Yes." Shinnosuke glanced over his shoulder at Go, and then back at Chase. "I'll let you know."

By the time Chase finished with the Ride Chaser – it had gone more quickly than he'd expected, with the majority of the damage being cosmetic – Go was awake and looking around the Drive pit in evident confusion. "What are we doing here?" he said, unfolding himself from the bench and stretching as he wandered the short distance to where Chase was putting the motorcycle back together.

"The bikes were damaged," Chase said. "I was repairing them."

"Right, right." Go rubbed his hands over his face and then through his hair, making it stand up in odd places. "What time is it?"

Chase told him, and Go frowned. "I swear it wasn't that late two minutes ago," he said, and Chase stood up to see if he'd sustained a concussion on top of nearly being choked. Go batted his hands away and dodged to the side when Chase tried to see if his pupils were the same size. "What are you doing?"

"You appear disoriented."

"What is it with – everything is fine. That was a figure of speech." Go backed up, putting Chase out of arm's reach, and walked around him to the Ride Macher. "Did you already?" He examined it closely, very obviously not looking at Chase.

"It's been repaired," Chase said. Go had been very careful about not touching him accidentally or on purpose since the disastrous trip to the abandoned amusement park, and Chase missed it. He wasn't sure what the appropriate social rules for initiating physical contact were, though, and he didn't want to somehow make things worse by breaking them. Go ducking away now, Chase thought, meant that he wanted the current state of affairs to continue. It was disappointing. "Go," he started, and then stopped.

Not knowing what exactly he wanted to ask made it harder to find the words for it. Chase didn't know how to explain the bubble of warmth in his chest every time he looked at Go, or the hard knot of worry that had lodged itself under where his breastbone should have been when he'd thought the Roidmude was going to kill Go right in front of him. He didn't know how to explain what he wanted, or even really what it was.

"What?" Go said, curiously.

Chase closed his mouth with a snap. "Nothing," he said, and was obscurely disappointed that Go took it at face value.

"Where's Shin?" Go asked after a pause slightly too long to be anything but awkward, and Chase explained the situation with the reunited special investigation team. For some reason, Go looked smug about it.

"I knew it," he said. "I knew he was going to do that."

Chase let it go; Shinnosuke would contact them when he was ready, and when Chase's skills as a fighter were necessary, he would offer them. In the meantime, Chase had other work to do.


	5. Go: Never Ever

The piece of the Core turned out to be mangled beyond any attempts at analysis; Go was sure that there were parts of multiple Cores – at least two – welded together to make some sort of FrankenCore, but there wasn't enough left of it to verify his theory one way or the other. Rinna flat-out dismissed the idea that it was possible.

"Cores are highly personal," she said, leaning back in her chair. "They hold memories, programming, personality imprints."

"You're telling me things I already know," Go said, spinning his own chair around. He was sitting backwards in it, having rolled it across the floor to peer over Rinna's shoulder. "Besides, we've seen Roidmudes use more than one Core at a time."

"You can't just," Rinna gestured. "Glue them together and expect to get something viable out of it. The resulting Roidmudes didn't have cohesive enough programming to function with any sort of intelligence. From what I've heard, these clearly acted with some sort of agency. And those were whole Cores, not bits and pieces. I don't see how it could function at all, without at least one whole Core."

Go rested his chin on his folded arms. "But this one did."

"Which means it's impossible for it to have had parts of multiple Cores," Rinna said, and then stopped with her mouth slightly open. "Or at least highly improbable," she amended. "It would take an expert to pull something like that off. I don't think I could do it."

Go raised one hand.

"Neither could you," Rinna said, forestalling Go's comment before he could make it.

"Yes, I – okay, no, I probably couldn't." Go pushed his hair out of his face instead; it needed to be cut, but he hadn't had the time. "But it's possible."

"I just don't think it's likely," Rinna said, and that was the end of it.

Go turned the remnant of the Core over and over in his hands, wondering if Chase would have anything to say on the matter. Since the fight, Chase had been scarce; he'd either been working yet another new job, or looking for yet another new job, or he'd been sitting cross-legged on Go's balcony, face turned toward the sun in complete defiance of the early February cold.

Asking his opinion on the Core fragment seemed like a natural step, but Go hesitated in the entrance of his own apartment. Chase's shoes were neatly lined up against the step, and Go left his in the appropriate position next to them. It seemed inexplicably disrespectful to just leave them in the middle of the entrance the way he had before Chase had come back, despite the fact that it was Go's apartment and Chase was technically his houseguest.

"Does this look weird to you?" he asked, stepping through the kitchen and around the corner into the living room. Chase wasn't in the living room, although the kotatsu was radiating heat. The balcony door was cracked open behind the closed drapes; Go could feel the draft coming in. He opened the drapes, not wanting to wrestle with the door behind them, only to find Chase sliding the door open. Go backed up hastily, nearly tripping over the kotatsu.

"Go," Chase said, the corners of his mouth tugging slightly downwards.

"Sorry," Go said, on surer footing now. He'd promised not to invade Chase's personal space; promised himself, technically, and not Chase, but that didn't mean he was going to break his word. "Uh, this." He held up the piece of the Core.

"That was from the Roidmude that was destroyed," Chase said, correctly identifying the twisted bit of metal. Go expected nothing less.

"Do you think it's possible that parts of multiple destroyed Cores were fused together to make a functioning Core?"

Chase blinked at him, face absolutely blank. "Neither Krim nor Banno created a Core in that particular manner," he said finally.

"Well, no," Go said. "And they're both – well, Banno's dead, and Krim is in the belt and not making anything but that's beside the point. Do you think it's possible?"

"Under the right conditions, with the right equipment, and with enough expertise, such a thing might be done," Chase said slowly, as if he were carefully picking and choosing his words. "But it is not something I saw Banno do."

"I knew it." Go clenched his fist around the Core fragment and then let go hastily when the sharp edge bit into his palm. "Ow." It hadn't broken through the skin, and he dropped it onto the kotatsu. His phone chimed a text alert, and Go frowned at it.

"What?" Chase said, and Go stopped frowning at his phone.

"Kiriko wants us to go to a thing."

"What kind of thing?" Chase was still expressionless, standing in a way that reminded Go that he wasn't quite human, for all that he was trying to be.

"A work thing. A sort of work thing." Apparently the special investigation unit was trying to rebuild its bonds of camaraderie by holding an introductory meeting. Go was sure it wasn't so much a formal meeting as it was an excuse to drink with coworkers, which in theory he would have been excited about. "The department has us both listed as consultants."

Chase kept looking at him, not answering questions Go hadn't asked.

For his part, Go wasn't really feeling it; he had work lined up for the following day, and the aftereffects of the Mach transformation were still lingering. He didn't want to try and keep up with Shin and everyone else, particularly not when he usually would have been the one setting the pace. Still, he couldn't exactly refuse to show up. "Yay," he said, unenthusiastically.

"Your sister is very efficient," Chase said, and then the blankness slid off his face to be replaced by a perfect imitation of someone looking abashed at having forgotten something. "She asked me to tell you earlier. I did not mention it. I'm sorry."

"We all forget stuff once in a while, buddy," Go said, although now he could add irritation at Chase's lapse in memory to the repressed stew of emotion he didn't want to let out. He looked at the text again. "Whoops. It's not Kiriko wants us to go to a thing. We're already late."

The up side to the gathering was that it wasn't in the Drive Pit, which was a pain in the ass to get to without actually driving there. It was in a small restaurant close to a train station; Go deliberately left the Ride Macher parked and herded Chase onto the train instead, brushing off Chase's questions. Kiriko met him at the door, smile wide and bright.

"You made it," she said. She looked amazing, relaxed and happy in a different way than she had been since getting married. Go reached out and hugged her.

"Work is a good look on you," he said.

Kiriko eyed him speculatively. "Are you volunteering to babysit?"

"Uh." Go looked sideways at Chase, who appeared entirely oblivious to the conversation. "Maybe sometimes."

Kiriko laughed, a rare treat, and gestured both of them inside. The gathering was more or less in full swing, less formal than Go had anticipated. In rebellion, he'd worn soft brown corduroy pants and a t-shirt under his white jacket, although Chase had dressed a little more formally. Go wasn't out of place, as neither Rinna nor Kyu was wearing anything more formal than he was. Neither was Kiriko, for that matter; Go didn't think he'd seen her wear jeans since she was a teenager.

There was a general noise of welcome before drinks materialized in front of both Go and Chase; Chase simply looked at his and then at Go for clarification. Go shrugged, and Chase took one sip before making a face and requesting water against the backdrop of continued conversation.

"So," Kiriko said. "Everyone else already knows, but I'm going back to work in two weeks."

"You found a daycare," Go guessed. She'd been searching since before Eiji had been born, although she hadn't been able to start sending applications until he was three months old. "You're off the waiting list."

She poked his nose. "Got it in one," she said.

"Congratulations." Go sipped part of his own drink. "That means I don't have to babysit, right."

"Too late, you already volunteered," Kiriko teased, and Go looked at Shin for rescue. No help was coming from that quarter; Shin was utterly involved in some contest between Otta and Kyu. Go felt a knot inside him loosen slightly as the atmosphere sank in, and smiled back at his sister. He'd worked with these people the last time the Roidmudes had made trouble, even if it had been something of an antagonistic relationship, and he'd forgotten how much of a sense of camaraderie the special investigation unit had managed to create. It was nice to be part of it this time around.

Chase, on his other side, was the only part of the equation that Go was having trouble reconciling. He was going to ignore it, just for one night. He drained his glass and signaled for another one.

The floor tilted under Go's feet, and he felt Chase's grip on his shoulder tighten. He looked down, suspiciously, but Chase wasn't doing anything untoward. He was pushing Go back in what he clearly thought was the right direction, but he was wrong. If he kept it up, Go was going to slide right down the misbehaving ground until he hit the nearest wall.

"Hold still," Chase said, unlocking the front door. He'd gotten both of them home following the afterparty without incident, after Go had managed to get lost in the twenty meters between the karaoke box and the train station.

"You should have sung," Go said, trying unsuccessfully at first to get his shoes off. Second try was the charm, but the floor was slippery on top of the step and Chase hauled him upright again before pulling the door closed and locking it.

"I don't sing," Chase said absently.

"Singing is the point of karaoke," Go informed him. "That's why we went. For singing." He wasn't sure Chase believed him. "Also the drinking," he added. "But mostly the singing."

Chase wasn't paying attention to him, Go discovered. He was looking at his phone, scrolling up and down, and Go was irrationally disappointed. He shook Chase's arm off and navigated the treacherous hallway toward the kitchen. There was a coffee maker, and coffee was what came after drinking and karaoke, or he'd never manage to sleep properly.

The faucet refused to put water into the carafe, and Go frowned at it, clinging to the edge of the sink. The kitchen floor wasn't any more cooperative than the hallway had been; it kept trying to throw him sideways. He inched toward the coffee maker, carafe no more than half full. Chase plucked it out of his hands and put it down, without emptying the water into the tank where it belonged. That was no way to get the coffee made. "Hey," Go protested, several beats too late.

"What are you doing?" Chase asked.

"Obviously making coffee," Go said. He was losing the struggle with the floor. Chase steered him over to the single chair, moving Go's laptop out of reach and stacking the papers surrounding it on top of the laptop rather than leave them on the kitchen table. Go narrowed his eyes. "Those were in order," he said.

"If I make coffee, will you go to sleep?" Chase asked, both voice and face pained. Go felt a stab of guilt.

"You don't have to," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I fucked it all up." He'd ruined everything. He dropped his head onto the table, where it made a satisfying thunk and jumbled his thoughts into incoherence. He liked not having to think, and did it again.

"Stop it," Chase said, catching Go's forehead and pushing him back upright. His outline was blurred, and it was the most beautiful thing Go had ever seen. "You're going to hurt something," Chase was saying, and Go tore his eyes away from Chase's mouth.

"I wanted you to be alive. And happy. Definitely happy," he said, fixing his gaze on Chase's eyes. He couldn't get in trouble that way. Something burned in the corner of his eye, and he brushed it away. His fingers came away inexplicably wet.

"I'll make the coffee," Chase said, backing up, and Go had made it worse again.

He dropped his head on the table and left it there, so Chase wouldn't have to worry, and also wouldn't have to look at him. It was a nice table. Gray. Smooth. Full of table-ness, which Go had never considered to be a desirable quality before, but was in retrospect perfect for a table.

"Go?" The sound of a mug clinking down on top of the previously perfect table was loud, and Go looked up. Coffee had materialized out of nowhere, light and with a sweet undertone to its scent. He pulled it toward him and took a sip. It was perfect. Chase was crouching down, at eye level with him, face unreadable. It might have been worried, or annoyed. It was hard to tell.

"I want you to know," Go said solemnly, pushing the cup toward the wall. It wobbled, but stayed upright. "I want you to know that you are just as human as the rest of us. And I love you." His eyes burned again, and he rubbed them to make it stop. "You – you don't have to. You're normal. For a person. But I love you."

When he'd first seen Reiko, in the outside world, he'd serenaded her with a concert. Dancers. Fireworks. It had gone spectacularly wrong, and Kiriko had scolded him for going overboard instead of just honestly expressing his emotions. Trouble was, if he hadn't gone overboard, there would have been nothing for him to express. The emotional connection he'd felt with Reiko hadn't been romantic, as much as he'd wanted it to be, as much as he'd tried to make it be, after.

She'd seen through him, after a while. Not even a while. It hadn't taken long at all, and she'd been upset. Of course she'd been upset. Go couldn't blame her then, and he couldn't blame her now. He could have had a friend, if he hadn't been so hellbent on returning her obviously romantic affection to prove that there was nothing wrong with him.

"I don't think there's something wrong with you," Chase said softly, and Go realized he'd been speaking out loud.

"Of course there is," he said. The dizzying sway had settled into a buzz just underneath his skin and a persistent drag to one side, and Go rested his chin on his folded arms. "Good boys don't want to screw other boys. And I won't try, okay, you said no, and I'm not an asshole. It'll go away eventually. Just don't stop being my friend."

"Go," Chase said again, exasperated this time.

Go couldn't look at him; he pushed away from the table, nearly tripping over the traitorous floor in the process and closed the bedroom door behind himself, leaning against it. He stopped himself from sliding down to the floor by the thinnest of margins, walking forward until he hit something, and flopped face down onto the bed. The disorienting movement of the ground eased, but sleep was a long time coming.


	6. Interlude: Tomari (Prove It)

Tomari Shinnosuke frowned at the readout; there were no heavy acceleration particles registering at the location of the previous day's fight. Granted, he wasn't using the Ride Booster Set attached to Tridoron, and the equipment he had was significantly less sensitive, but there still should have been a trace of something.

"Well?" Kiriko asked over the radio. She wasn't with him in the field, but she'd brought Eiji to the office while she prepared for her return to work.

"Nothing," Shinnosuke said. "I don't understand."

"How about you?" Kiriko asked, and Shinnosuke glanced over at his field partner. Koichi Kano had declined to attend to the low-key welcome-back party the chief had decided to throw for the Special Investigation Unit in honor of its temporary reinstatement. Still, despite the less than social aspect to the man, Shinnosuke had to admit that he was turning out to work well with the other members of the unit. Kano had a good eye for detail and apparently infinite patience for his coworkers' shenanigans; the latter alone made him easy to work with.

"Nothing," Kano said. He'd picked up on how to use the particle detector with ease, not that it was particularly complex machinery. "Are you sure a heavy acceleration field was detected?"

"It wasn't," Shinnosuke said. "That's the problem."

Kano frowned at him from underneath the ridiculous helmet; it made him look even more like the revived Chase, and if Chase was going to stop wearing the purple leather all the time, Shinnosuke was going to have trouble telling the two of them apart. Chase might not have copied Kano's personality, but they were remarkably similar all the same.

"We got reports of the Roidmudes, not the heavy acceleration field," Shinnosuke clarified. "Since we didn't detect the field, we don't know how long they were here before we showed up."

Kano nodded, looking around. The former construction site had been roped off; road repairs had been scheduled for that particular day, but had been delayed by conditions in other parts of the city. The area had therefore been left cordoned off but not manned, meaning no one had been present when the Roidmudes had begun causing damage. "The question," Kano said, "is exactly what they were doing here."

"Exactly." Shinnosuke stabbed a finger toward his field partner. "What were they doing." He turned around, looking over the construction site. The street hadn't been torn up for repair, even, nothing had been started before the Roidmudes had shown up. It was considerably worse for the wear now, and the entire block was inaccessible until further notice.

As far as Shinnosuke could tell, the Roidmudes hadn't had a particular objective in mind. They hadn't even formed a pact with a human, and there had been no indication that they'd been attempting to invoke a particular emotion.

"They weren't acting without thought," he said, in response to Kano's next question. "They wanted something, I just don't know what it was."

"What, exactly, did they do?" Kano examined the battlefield, as if he were trying to figure it out, but the evidence of whatever the Roidmudes had done before the Kamen Riders had shown up was erased by the damage caused in the fight.

"They were drilling," Shinnosuke said. "Drilling patterns into the concrete. They hit power lines and a water main."

"Which have to be fixed." Kano took the helmet off and scrubbed his hands through his hair. It fell into something resembling order, which Shinnosuke vaguely resented. If he'd done that, his hair would have stood up in tufts all over his head. "Is there any imagery of the pattern?"

"Not so much." Shinnosuke sighed. "Usually it's easier to figure out what they're doing."

"If I recall the case files correctly," Kano said, "their main drive was evolution, into an advanced form."

"It was," Shinnosuke said. "Evolve into an advanced state, invoke emotion, achieve the super evolution state, permanently freeze the world." He ticked off the points on his fingers. "They needed four, for that." He paused, remembering something else. "But 108 was a little different."

"He was the time traveler?" Kano asked. "The one who merged with his past self and tried to induce the Global Freeze on his own?"

"You've done your homework," Shinnosuke said. "But none of these appear to have time traveled, and if they did, then why come to a time when there aren't any Roidmudes? No, they have another objective. I'm sure of it."

"You're the one who's the most familiar with them," Kano said.

"If you have a theory, I want to hear it," Shinnosuke told him. He meant it, no edge of sarcasm; he was out of ideas, and if Kano's fresh perspective had something, at worst it would be useless. At best, it would give them an idea of what to do next.

"I'm not sure," Kano said. "I don't think we have enough information."

"Or we have too much information," Shinnosuke muttered. "It's like they were just trying to get our attention." The idea made more sense than he wanted it to, but there was never anything simple in what the Roidmudes did.

"Revenge?" Kano offered. "For having killed them all the first time?"

"It's never that easy," Shinnosuke said dourly, packing up his equipment. "Let's get back to headquarters; there's nothing else we're going to find here."


	7. Go: Before the Full Moon Rises

Neither hide nor hair of a Roidmude showed itself over the next several days, much to Go's frustration. It wasn't that he was bored, specifically; the temp agency kept sending work his way, and he didn't really want to refuse, given the uncertainty of the job in general. Go could have used some sort of distraction, though. Chase was suddenly consistently underfoot; he appeared to have given up his string of part-time jobs in favor of lurking in Go's immediate vicinity. The staff at the temp agency started making jokes about Go's new assistant the third time he ran into one or more of them, and Go tried to laugh it off.

Chase, for his part, was somehow even more awkward than usual. He kept staring, and Go didn't know what to do about it. His crush – his inappropriate infatuation – wasn't going away, and having Chase around all the time was just making it worse. Chase kept giving him looks that were probably expressionless but that Go couldn't help but read as expectant no matter how much he told himself to respect his friend's boundaries. Not knowing what had precipitated Chase's abrupt change in behavior was a problem with a relatively simple solution. Even understanding that, every time Go thought about asking Chase what he was doing, a dim memory that he couldn't quite grasp ignited a feeling of dread, and he retreated from the impulse to speak.

It was almost a relief to feel the rumblings of an earthquake, even as the shaking got worse. The papers covering Go's kitchen table slid out of their neat stacks and the cord holding the light hanging from the ceiling creaked in protest as it swayed back and forth. Go pulled his phone out of his pocket, texting Shin. Roidmude?

No, Shin texted back. Or at least there's no heavy acceleration field detected.

No heavy acceleration field had been detected the last time a Roidmude had shown up either, which meant the lack of one was no confirmation one way or the other.

The epicenter is west, Shin texted. It looks like a natural phenomenon.

Go tapped his fingernail against the side of his phone. I should go take a look, just in case, he sent back. If nothing else, it would get him out of Tokyo. Maybe a change of scenery would help him re-center himself and let him work through his improper feelings. Maybe some time away from Chase would make him stop watching Go with that unreadable expression. Go didn't hold out much hope on the latter score, but at least he'd be better able to deal with it.

The shaking finally stopped, and Go flipped on the news. The epicenter of the quake had been farther west than he'd thought, from Shin's brief comment, and the earthquake had been worse than it had seemed. Tokyo had just gotten the edges, but a small town on the other side of Mt. Fuji had been all but leveled. The volcano itself hadn't reacted, although Go couldn't help but wonder if an eruption was perhaps imminent. It was easy to forget that Mt. Fuji was technically an active volcano, even if it had been three centuries since it had last decided to bless the surrounding area with streams of molten rock.

Go packed what little he'd need on a possible overnight trip as he listened to the news with half an ear; he wasn't the only one who'd wondered about volcanic activity, apparently, given the hastily thrown together interviews with alleged experts. Most of what was said boiled down, as far as Go could tell, to we'll have to wait and see. Not particularly useful, Go thought, and threw his bag over his shoulder.

Chase materialized at the front door before Go so much as got his shoes on. "Where are you going?" he asked.

"Shin thinks there might be some Roidmude involvement at the epicenter of the earthquake," Go said. His shoes were giving him trouble, but he finally got his feet in them. His hand was on the doorknob when Chase spoke again.

"Was there a heavy acceleration field?"

"No." Go sighed. "But there wasn't last time, either, so I'm going to see if there's anything there." The trip out would take long enough, on his bike, that even if Roidmudes had been involved, they were likely to be long gone by the time he arrived. He was going to go anyway, just in case there was something to find.

"I'll come with you." Chase apparently didn't feel as though he had to pack anything; he simply slipped his feet into his shoes, crowding far too close to Go in the narrow entryway for either comfort or Go's sanity.

"I'll call you if there's something," Go said. He couldn't clear his head with Chase around; he wasn't sure if he could do it with Chase somewhere else, but he wouldn't know until he tried.

"You don't want me with you?" Chase said, and Go's traitorous mind imbued the question with another meaning entirely.

"I always want you with me," he said before he could stop the words from slipping out, and then had to resist the urge to bang his head against the door. "I mean, it's probably nothing, and there's no point in wasting your time, too." The words kept coming, once he'd started talking. "If there's nothing Roidmude-related, I can at least get some photographs." He clenched his jaw shut.

"I would like to accompany you," Chase said, and Go gave up.

"We might be staying overnight," he said, and then had to wait as Chase took his shoes back off to go collect a toothbrush and whatever else he decided he might need.

The drive, at least, wasn't awkward. They couldn't speak to each other in any case, and the nonverbal communication indicating route and direction went as smoothly as Go could have wanted. They reached the disaster area in surprisingly good time, but Go felt their luck run out as they immediately ran into someone with actual authority. Not that keeping disaster tourists out of a potentially dangerous area wasn't necessary, it was just that Go didn't technically have the authority to be wandering into said disaster area, even as a consultant for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, and the investigation he needed to conduct made him look like a disaster tourist to the outside eye.

"Are you part of the volunteer effort?" the man said, and Go could see Chase blink.

"I would like to register as part of the volunteer effort," he said, and while he was getting directions on how to be useful, Go snuck off.

There was no sign of anything Roidmude related; Go had a pretty solid idea of visual identifying marks, and none of them were in evidence. He managed to avoid the actual relief personnel during his fruitless search, eventually coming back to the edge of the area with nothing to show except the knowledge that their new Roidmudes weren't causing earthquakes. The ground still shook gently under his feet from time to time, and Go cast a wary glance at the silhouette of Mt. Fuji every time it did, but no lava appeared to be forthcoming.

"You're late," Chase said, materializing at his elbow.

"What?" It was dark and getting colder, and Go was ready to drive back to Tokyo. Chase had apparently not only signed himself up for volunteer duty, he'd taken the liberty of writing Go's name down as well. "Why?" Go asked. He'd gotten a number of potentially usable photos out of his exploration, which did nothing to make him look like something other than a disaster tourist, so maybe Chase had had a point after all.

"To explain your presence," Chase said, which was how Go found himself sorting supplies for the remainder of the evening. Chase, at least, was nowhere to be seen. Go didn't think it helped, but he threw himself into concentrating on the task in front of him. By the time he was released, he felt calmer than he had in days; he finally felt the first stirrings of optimism that he and Chase were going to be okay. He wasn't going to screw it up.

Finding Chase took longer than Go had anticipated; he eventually found him carrying a full bag labeled Biohazard toward a marked bin. Go raised his eyebrows as Chase threw the bag inside and then went to carefully wash his hands. "You finished?" Go asked.

"Yes." Chase dried his hands thoroughly and waved goodbye to someone in a uniform.

"Are they expecting you back tomorrow?" Go asked. If they were, he was leaving Chase there; no one was expecting him, and he had other work to do. Or at least, he had the obligation to be available in case of Roidmude activity.

"No," Chase said. "We can leave." He didn't ask if Go had found anything; Go supposed that Chase assumed Go would have told him. It was a fair assumption to make.

Go found himself not wanting to make the long drive back to Tokyo in the middle of the night, but they didn't have much of a choice; there was nowhere nearby enough for them to stay, given the people who had evacuated and those who had shown up for relief efforts. It was with a profound sense of relief that he parked his bike underneath his apartment building, Chase pulling in next to him. Go was chilled to the bone, his fingers uncooperative as he struggled with both turning the bike off and then getting his key into the lock on the front door.

Chase gently took the keys out of his hands after Go's second failed attempt, unlocking the door. "You're cold," he said, unnecessarily.

"It's winter," Go muttered. He hadn't anticipated driving in the middle of the night.

Chase herded him inside, which wasn't much warmer than outside, and Go made a beeline straight for the bedroom. He didn't get more than two steps down the hallway before Chase nudged him toward the bath. "You'll warm up better," he said. Go was exhausted, on top of being cold, and briefly weighed the pros and cons of arguing with Chase before taking the path of least resistance.

Stripping to wash before climbing into the bath almost made him rethink his position; it was colder once he was wet, no matter how warm the water was, but sinking into the hot water felt amazing. "You're right," he called through the closed door, the cold at his core finally melting away. Go stayed in the water long enough for it to begin to cool off before climbing out. The chill hadn't left the air, but it didn't bother him as he dried off and pulled on his pajamas.

Chase, lurking outside the door with a steaming mug in hand, was another matter. "I have to talk to you," he said.

"Can it wait until morning?" Go asked, but Chase's face fell. "Okay, okay, let's talk."

The kotatsu had been turned on while he was getting warm, and Go noticed that Chase had apparently washed and changed. He felt a pang of guilt for taking up so much time in the bath when Chase had clearly wanted to get clean as well. Chase didn't seem to mind, though; he put the mug in front of Go and wriggled underneath the kotatsu next to him.

Go wrapped his hands around the mug; it smelled like tea. "Go ahead," he said, when Chase just sat there looking at him. He smelled like soap, and Go tightened his grip on the mug. Stop that, he told himself.

"Why is it inappropriate for men to be attracted to men?" Chase asked, and Go was suddenly glad that he hadn't actually tried to drink the tea. He would have choked on it or spit it out.

"What?" he said, having nearly choked anyway.

"You said good boys don't want to screw other boys," Chase said, mimicking Go's inflections perfectly. Part of the extremely vague memory of that conversation after the Special Investigation Team's karaoke night, when he'd been too drunk to stand up straight, clarified itself in Go's head. It dragged the sense of dread right along with it, and Go swallowed hard. Apparently he'd talked to Chase about things better left unsaid, and prompted Chase into hovering around him with expectations Go couldn't in good conscience even think about meeting. "I don't understand."

"It's just," Go said, and the words stuck in his throat. "It's just not supposed to be done," he said, finally. "You can mess around with other guys, if you want, but then you grow up and get married and have kids. It's how things work." The irony of Go being the individual in the conversation attempting to extoll the virtues of social compliance was not lost on him; he just didn't want to make things more difficult for Chase. A lack of heteronormativity would make things more difficult for Chase.

Chase didn't answer, just kept looking at him. Go scrubbed his hands through his hair.

"You just don't do it," he said, unable to come up with a better reason.

"But if you love someone," Chase said, frowning. "Sometimes it's wrong to love someone?"

"I am not the right person to talk to you about this," Go muttered. He wasn't trying to be heard, but the words slipped out before he could stop them. "Look, you love your friends, right? And your family," he said in a louder voice, forestalling whatever Chase might have tried to interject. "That's okay, that's good, but you can't – you can't want to fuck the wrong people."

"Wrong?" Chase repeated.

"Like." Go floundered, searching for some kind of example, any kind of example to demonstrate that there were socially right and wrong ways to handle attraction. He couldn't think of anything. "The wrong people," he said again, helplessly. "It just isn't okay."

Chase tilted his head to the side. "I still do not understand what constitutes the wrong people," he said. "If everyone involved wants the same thing, why are there sometimes problems?" He paused. "Unless romantic relationships are more involved with the surrounding population than I had been led to believe."

Somehow the conversation had gotten away from Go entirely, and he wasn't sure how. "No, it's – no, that's not what I meant." He rubbed his eyes. "Look, it's not accepted, okay? It makes things harder. People don't like it. They don't react well. There are consequences. You lose friends. Some people lose their families." His throat closed off; he didn't think his sister knew about him. He didn't think Shin knew. Go had tried very hard, once back in Japan, to not let that part of him out.

"You think Kiriko would reject you," Chase said, with something like dawning realization. "And Shinnosuke."

"I don't want that to happen to you," Go said.

"Your sister loves you," Chase said. He was leaning toward Go, ever so slightly, and Go wanted so badly to close the distance between the two of them. "I don't think she would stop because of an abstract idea."

"No, she would just be horrified and disappointed and never want to see me again." It wasn't quite his worst fear, but it was close. Go stared into his mug of cooling tea and then lifted it almost blindly to his mouth; it was less that he wanted to drink and more that he needed a barrier between himself and Chase's quietly inquisitive eyes.

"You are very difficult to understand sometimes," Chase said, after a long moment, and Go nearly choked.

"Me," he said, when he'd gotten his breath back.

"People," Chase clarified, and eyed him with the same lack of expression. "Why did you choose to like other men, instead of women?"

Go choked all over again, without the excuse of the tea, and the coughing fit that followed had Chase staring at him in consternation. "What?" he finally got out, throat raw. "What do you mean, choose?"

Chase blinked. "I did not think it was a difficult question," he said, voice rising at the end just enough to sound uncertain.

"It wasn't something I chose," Go said. "It just happened. You don't pick who you like."

"Then I don't understand why it should be wrong," Chase said, with an undertone of very real frustration.

Go gave up. He opened his mouth to tell Chase that there wasn't any other way to explain it, if Chase didn't get it, but Chase apparently wasn't finished speaking.

"How do you know if you like someone?" Chase asked.

He's not trying to make things worse, Go thought distantly, but the voice of reason was drowned out by the much louder sense of hurt and betrayal. Even if Chase had zero obligation to return his feelings, and no matter that Go desperately wanted Chase to be happy, there was still that edge of raw pain. "You," he said, and cleared his throat. Chase didn't know how much it hurt, for him to ask that question.

"I thought I liked your sister," Chase said, eyes boring into Go's skull.

Go was very familiar with that particular portion of Chase's learning curve; he had not been happy about it. He gritted his teeth now, determined not to say anything that he would regret.

"What I feel about you is different," Chase said, still staring at him intently. Expectantly. "And I don't know what it is."

No, Go thought. I can't – I won't be an experiment. It rang hollow, though, and he knew that if Chase wanted to use him to figure out the finer points of attraction, he would let him do it. It would break Go's heart, but he would take it, if it meant not sending Chase into the dog-eat-dog jungle wasteland of trying to have a same-sex relationship in the arena of general society. It occurred to Go that his internal metaphors were jumbled, and also that he'd completely missed whatever else Chase had just said.

"Are you listening?" Chase frowned.

"Of course I'm listening," Go snapped, and Chase's eyes narrowed. Go ignored it, taking a deep breath and forcing the words out. "You don't want me," he said. "If you want to know what love is, you should find a –" He couldn't make himself say it.

"But how do I know?" Chase pressed. Go couldn't take it anymore; the stress and exhaustion and the ridiculously long day and the way Chase kept leaning toward him drowned out what was left of his better judgment.

"If you don't want me to do this, tell me to stop," he said, and reached. Go cupped Chase's cheek in one hand and drew him in closer, so slowly that it felt like a torturous eternity.

"I don't want you to stop," Chase whispered, and Go surged forward. Chase's lips were soft, smooth underneath his, and this time he wasn't frozen, statue-like. His mouth opened, willingly, and it was a long moment before Go pulled back, breathing hard.

"That's," he said, and words failed him. "That's how you know," he said, lamely. "If you liked it, that's how you know."

"My initial impression is very positive." Chase wasn't quite as calm and collected as his words might have implied; Go could see that his pupils were dilated, even if Chase's breathing was perfectly even. "But I think I might need further data."

Go opened his mouth to tell Chase to where he could put his request for further data and caught the barest hint of a smirk playing at the edge of Chase's mouth. "You little bastard, where did you learn to be sarcastic," he said, and leaned forward again. He took it more slowly, this time, letting Chase set the tone and pace.

The thud of the floor hitting his shoulderblades jarred Go out of the half-trance he'd fallen into, with Chase straddling his hips and biting far too gently at the base of his throat.

"Wait," Go said, although it felt like crawling across ground glass. "Wait."

Chase sat up, the redistribution of his weight putting exactly the right kind of pressure on exactly the wrong spot, and Go couldn't help the groan of pleasure. "Am I doing something wrong?"

"No, you, fuck, you're doing everything right," Go said, once his vision had stopped whiting out around the edges. "That's why you have to stop." This was his last shred of self-control, and he was clinging to it with just as much desperation as he was holding onto Chase's hips; if Chase had been human, he would have bruised, Go thought distantly.

"I don't follow," Chase said, looking down at him quizzically, and even from that angle, he was beautiful.

"You – you're new to all of this," Go said. "I'm not going to take advantage of you." Every other part of him was screaming in frustration, but he couldn't push Chase into doing something he wasn't ready for. The part of his brain that didn't care what his rational mind wanted pointed out that Chase was participating just as enthusiastically, with all tangible signs of enjoyment. Go silently told it to shut the fuck up.

Chase paused. "You mean sex in general or sex with a man?" he asked.

"What?" Go said cleverly, unable to come up with a more coherent response.

Chase frowned at him. "I am not entirely certain, but this feels very familiar. Although I believe my previous partner was a woman."

"What? When?" Go pushed himself up on one elbow, trying to even the playing field just a little. Ridiculously, even having a conversation about Chase's possible hypothetical ex wasn't putting a damper on anything.

"Is it customary to have a conversation about previous sexual partners during –"

"No," Go said, dropping back to the floor and burying his face in his hands. "It's a huge faux pas." He was inordinately proud of himself for remembering the word, and he was going to hold on to that small feeling of victory as an anchor against everything else.

"I see." Chase didn't say anything else, and Go finally peeked out between his fingers. Chase was watching him, with a definite look of uncertainty. "Do you want to stop?" he said.

"No," Go said. "I absolutely do not want to stop."

"Neither do I." Chase didn't quite smile, but it was close enough. "I think we should continue."

"Then get back down here," Go said, and Chase willingly obliged.

Go woke up alone, in his own bed with the light coming from the wrong direction. The clock told him it was late afternoon, his stomach that it was empty, and when he stood upright, the cold air hitting his entirely bare skin told him he was an idiot. He cursed, searching for clean clothes and pulling on the first things he found. He vaguely remembered cleaning up, but not crawling into bed.

Chase wasn't anywhere to be found in the apartment, not even on the balcony, but there was water and a measure of coffee grounds in the coffee maker. Clouds scudded through the weak sunlight outside, breaking up the pale blue late February sky and promising snow at best and cold rain at worst. The quilt was neatly arranged around the kotatsu, but the heater itself was off.

"Fire hazard," Go muttered, even though leaving the heater on unattended probably wouldn't have any ill effects. Probably. He started the coffee maker, even if caffeine so late in the day would make it harder to sleep later, and found himself smiling at nothing. "Come on, Shijima, pull yourself together," he muttered, but the smile stuck with him.

Even the prospect of not having quite enough work lined up – and nothing for the next several days, except for what he'd gotten from the earthquake – and the headache of the new Roidmude agenda combined weren't enough to quell the warm little bubble in the center of his chest. Go sipped his coffee black and started in on the previous day's shots.

The scant daylight that had been remaining when he woke was long gone by the time Go sent what he had to his editor and rinsed out the now-dry coffee pot, but Chase was still nowhere to be seen. A small thread of doubt wound itself through Go's mind, edging out the warmth that had stayed with him and replacing it with the beginnings of bitter disappointment.

A shrill beep from Go's phone startled him badly enough that he nearly tripped over nothing, and he fished it out from underneath the re-organized stack of papers on the kitchen table. Shin was asking if he'd found anything the previous day, and with a frisson of guilt to go along with his disappointment, Go realized he hadn't kept the other man updated.

No sign of Roidmude activity, he texted back, sitting down in the chair he wasn't using as a makeshift extension of the table. Just an earthquake.

Shin sent back a frowny face. Go sent him a shrug. Keep your eyes open, Shin sent, which rated a thumbs-up rather than actual words in reply. Go was about to put his phone back on the table when a second unread text caught his attention. Chase had sent him a string of heart-marks, which somehow managed to infuse themselves with Chase's serious stoicism, and chased away the stirrings of doubt. Go smiled and sent back his own string of glitter hearts.

The ping of another incoming text made him smile, until he saw it was from Shin, and not Chase, and Go's first reaction was to roll his eyes at it. Shin was terrible at texting etiquette, even though he really shouldn't have been; Go's last text clearly hadn't required a reply, and yet here one was. The content of the text had him on his feet and rushing toward the door – the two Roidmudes they hadn't defeated were back.

Go skidded down the stairs, sending a text to Chase and one to Shin to call Chase before stuffing his helmet over his head and throwing himself onto the Ride Macher. The Ride Chaser wasn't in its usual spot, he noted absently, but at least that meant Chase had transportation if he got the text in time. The sky above the brightly lit streets was dim, stars blotted out by the golden fog of the streetlights, except for abrupt strips of clouds reflecting a dizzying pale orange. It looked warm, belying the chill bite of the wind.

The location Shin had sent would have been easy to find even if Go hadn't known where it was; the Roidmudes were just as loud as they had been the last time, and a fireball blossomed brilliantly just as Go reached the next street over. "No, dammit," he muttered, and tried to go faster.

His fears were unfounded; Shin was still on his feet and fighting, still in his base armored form but playing the smaller, faster Roidmude off its hulking counterpart for all he was worth. Go didn't bother stopping; he slammed the shift car into his belt while he was tearing down the road, screaming the transformation phrase into the aftermath of the explosion.

The suit settled over him, light as a feather and with a feeling of dancing on air. Go wrenched the Ride Macher around, pointed it at the larger Roidmude, and gunned it. The Roidmude ducked to the side at the last fraction of a second, but Go was ready. He spun the Zenrin Striker and slammed the Shooter into the Roidmude's midsection, using the impact to swing the Ride Macher to the side and bleed its momentum off into a shuddering halt. The Roidmude skidded across the ground, cracking a telephone pole in half.

Trusting Shin to take care of the smaller Roidmude, Go launched himself off the Ride Macher and flipped over the downed Roidmude, firing twice before he hit the ground in a crouch on its other side. "You're not getting away from me again!"

The obviously repaired shoulder joint proved that this was the same Roidmude that had escaped the last time; Go had tried to beat it to death with its own arm, but it was ridiculously well constructed. Even now, it was ponderously getting up, sparks from the broken wires overhead raining down over its head and shoulders.

"Watch out," Shin warned, but Go could see the wires moving as if in slow motion. Even Shin was moving more slowly than he had the last time.

Go laughed. "Tracking, terminating, both done at mach speed!" he shouted at the Roidmude. "Kamen Rider Mach!" Annoyingly, it didn't seem to be paying attention. Go felt like he could run circles around it. "Too slow," he taunted it, when it reached for him and missed by meters.

Firing the Zenrin Shooter straight up and hitting the Boost Igniter once sent a rain of blaster fire toward the Roidmude, but Go saw almost too late that one of the firebursts was headed straight for Drive. He darted forward, grabbing Shin around the waist and pulling him out of the line of fire just barely in time. The fireburst crashed into the ground just in front of Drive's opponent instead, sending it stumbling it backwards.

Go absorbed the momentum of his last-second dodge, leaving Shin on his feet and coming up on one knee. "You okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine, are you okay?" Shin asked, sounding dazed, words drawn out just a little too much.

"No problem," Go returned in English, for no other reason than he felt like it, and by that time his Roidmude had gotten its wits together. It was charging toward him, and Go had no desire to find out what would happen if it managed to hit him. He wouldn't get off as lightly as he had last time, he was sure. Shin was stalking his opponent again, and Go suddenly knew exactly how to get his Roidmude to go down and stay there.

It was almost on top of him, but Go was nothing if not the master of perfect timing. He leapt, using the Roidmude's raised knee as it started to take the final step as a springboard to catch it one-handed by the jaw and land on its shoulders with the Zenrin Shooter still in the other hand.

"Yippee ki yay, motherfucker," he said, quoting something he barely remembered, and fired the Zenrin Shooter straight into the back of the Roidmude's neck. The Roidmude staggered but didn't fall; Go fired again, and again, and the Roidmude's questing hands grabbed him and flung him into a wall. The Zenrin Shooter skittered away and Go barely managed to turn his momentum into a controlled roll. He came to his feet bare millimeters from the Roidmude's uncoordinated fist smashing the wall into dust.

"Try that again," he muttered, diving toward his weapon. The roar of a motorcycle engine, barely audible over the sound of the falling rubble, announced Chase's arrival on the field just as Go's fingers brushed against the Zenrin Shooter.


	8. Chase: Stop Stop It

The Roidmudes engaged by Mach and Drive were the same two that had escaped from the previous incident; their general build and structure matched, and even at a distance Chase could identify repair work corresponding to the damage he remembered being done in the first place. Drive had shifted out of his base form, but the speed of the smaller Roidmude was still giving him trouble. As Chase brought his bike to a halt, Drive failed to dodge and was knocked sprawling for his error.

Mach, when Chase glanced over, had just gotten his primary weapon back into his hands and was loading a Signal Bike into the Signal Landing Panel; he ducked under a clumsy strike without missing a beat, both his speed and fluidity a notch above what the Driver's standard specs should have given him. The wall Mach had just dodged away from had been crumpled, falling stone and damaged headstones behind it demonstrating the greater physical strength the Roidmude had gained between its appearances, and if it got its hands on Go again, it would kill him. Given how quickly Go was moving, Chase rated that probability as low at best but despite his assessment of the scene, he still had to fight down the urge to back up Mach instead of lending assistance to Drive.

"Stand still!" Chase heard Drive shout, and he finally identified the variation on Drive's base form; he'd switched into Type Speed Hunter, which made no sense when facing off against an opponent that Chase knew was faster than Drive's base type. Chase activated his own transformation and ran toward the smaller Roidmude, Shingou Ax in hand and Signal Chaser Bike already loaded into the Signal Landing Panel. He didn't want Shinnosuke dead, either, especially not from a preventable tactical error.

The telltale whine of Drive's Shift Brace activating brought Chase to a stumbling halt as he finally followed Shinnosuke's reasoning; Shinnosuke had summoned the Justice Cage, triggering its transformation into its Energy Prison shape, and he flung it toward the Roidmude. The motion was hidden by Drive's second tumble toward the ground as the Roidmude landed a second solid hit, and Chase could see the electric energy arcing towards the Roidmude. Incongruously, the Shingou Ax spit out its fully-charged notification while Chase stood frozen, and he barely registered the words Good to go!

He wants to catch it, Chase realized. If he could interrogate or at least examine the Roidmude, he might gain insight into what they were after this time around. Shinnosuke was persistent enough to find something useful, if he could get the Roidmude in one relatively undamaged piece and keep it contained. The Roidmude would figure out a way out of confinement, though, Chase was sure of it. He could see its fingers twitching even as the Energy Prison formed around it, and he swung the Shingou Ax at its unprotected spine in a desperate bid to save Shinnosuke from himself.

The edge of the Shingou Ax reacted poorly with the Energy Prison, the resulting shockwave knocking Chase flat. The rolling boom caught up with his ears a split second later, oddly doubled until Chase craned his head around to see Mach's opponent disappearing in a truly impressive fireball. Two down, he thought distantly, and then he caught a flutter of movement out of the corner of his eye.

The third Roidmude had somehow managed to use the explosion to fling itself clear of the field and vanished around a corner before Chase could react. He was fairly sure it was too battered to return immediately, and he took stock of his own body. He had sustained very little damage, and he climbed to his feet before releasing his transformation and turning to look for Drive.

Shinnosuke was already on his feet, armor gone. "What the hell?" he sputtered. Chase looked him over critically, but Shinnosuke didn't appear significantly hurt either.

"I did not foresee that particular effect," Chase said, once he was sure that his friend was no worse for the wear.

"I had him!" Shinnosuke said, throwing his hands in the air. "What were you doing?"

Chase hesitated. "I – was afraid that the Roidmude – that it –"

Shinnosuke deflated; that was the only word that came to mind. His shoulders slumped and he came within arm's reach of Chase. "You were worried he'd get out of the cage," he said, and Chase looked down instead of answering. Shinnosuke clapped him on the shoulder. "I had it under control," he said.

"The Roidmude escaped," Chase admitted.

Instead of annoyance, Shinnosuke's eyes lit up. "So we have another chance to catch it and see what's going on," he said, not quite rubbing his hands together. "Since I'm pretty sure Go blew up the other one, that's our shot at figuring out their master plan. If they have one. Hey, Go!"

No answer was forthcoming, and if Chase had had a stomach, he was fairly sure the bottom would have dropped out of it. He was running toward Mach's last noted location, suddenly terrified. There wasn't that much ground to cover, but it was torn to rubble by the fight, and Chase almost missed Go's prone form at first. Go was sprawled on his side behind a chunk of displaced pavement, and Chase dropped to his knees beside him.

"Go," he said, but the other man was breathing and there was no external sign of injury. "Go," Chase said again, and shook his shoulder. It took several long seconds for Go to blink his eyes open, and Chase had to pull him into a sitting position.

"Is it – is it gone?" Go asked, voice blurry.

"He okay?" Shinnosuke asked from behind Chase; Chase had almost forgotten that he was there.

"A-okay," Go muttered, but now he was leaning heavily against Chase. "Just need a minute." Chase could feel his breathing even out again, and concluded that Go was, annoyingly, asleep.

"Maybe," Chase said. Go shifted to curl into him, burying his face below Chase's collarbone.

"Didn't the Driver have this sort of effect before?" Shinnosuke crouched on Go's other side. "Go. Wake up. You can't sleep here."

In a slightly distorted mirror of the end of the previous fight, Chase ended up transforming both bikes into the Ride Crosser so as not to leave one of them behind while Shinnosuke shuffled Go into Tridoron's passenger seat.

"You sure he's okay?" Shinnosuke asked once they had reached the parking lot below Go's apartment and Chase had disconnected the Ride Crosser into its component bikes again. "What if there's something wrong that we can't see?"

Chase looked down. "The Mach Driver was never easy to use," he said, picking his words carefully. "It puts something of a strain on a human body." Shinnosuke did not look entirely convinced. Go, for his part, was no help at all. "I will monitor him," Chase said, and Shinnosuke's expression eased when Go woke up enough to climb the stairs up toward his door without help.

"Call me if there's, you know. Anything," he said.

"I will," Chase promised, and watched Shinnosuke drive away. Go was leaning on the wall outside his door, yawning, and Chase unlocked it.

"Make some coffee, will you?" Go said, rubbing his eyes. "I have to – there's something I have to finish." He left his shoes in a heap in the entrance, moving slowly down the hallway in his sock feet and taking several tries to successfully plug in the kotatsu. Despite his words, he was curled up on the floor asleep again when Chase peered through the door a scant few moments later, feet under the table.

That two of the three Roidmudes had been destroyed, despite their strength and speed, spoke to the continued strength of the Driver System; Chase was fairly sure that either Drive or Mach would manage to destroy the third Roidmude the next time they confronted it, unless it underwent significant upgrades in the meantime. Since the theoretical upgrade wasn't an issue Chase could address from inside Go's apartment, he set aside thoughts of it for the time being. He would see the third Roidmude again, and he knew what he would do when he did; until then, he had an entirely different quandary. He thought he knew what it meant, to initiate a physical relationship, but he wasn't human. The same rules might not apply, and the one person who could clarify was in no shape to hold a conversation.

"How do I know if this is real," he said softly, and brushed the hair out of Go's eyes. "All I know is that I feel better, when I'm with you." He paused, thinking about the words. They weren't quite right. "I feel, when I'm with you," he said. His throat felt thick, his voice softer than it should have been, for how hard it was to say anything at all. "I want – I want you to be happy when you see me," he continued, and it came out in a whisper. I'm sorry, he couldn't say out loud. I don't know what to do.

A sense of restlessness – Chase couldn't do nothing, but he couldn't leave Go alone without knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was all right, no matter what he'd said to Shinnosuke – drove him to purloin Go's laptop and continue the research he'd started after discovering he found an unexpected sense of satisfaction in working at the disaster relief site.

"I could start classes in April," he said to Go's oblivious form. "Technically I possess the prerequisite qualifications." He expected no answer, and he didn't get one. "I like helping people," Chase continued softly. "But I don't want to fight, not if I don't have to." Go slept through the entire time it took Chase to set the process of enrolling into a program for paramedics into motion. Chase didn't know if Go would understand the sentiment, the desire to avoid conflict when it had once been his sole purpose, but he knew what he did and didn't want now. I want to have a future with you, he thought. It rang inexplicably hollow.

The sky had lightened with false dawn by the time Chase closed the laptop; he hadn't had time to power down for self-repair and recharging, and he was starting to feel the edges of minor glitches. Go hadn't stirred, and Chase looked at him for a moment before putting a hand on his shoulder. I want to keep you safe echoed through his mind in waves, breaking and reforming against the rock of the third Roidmude, drowning out the rest of his thoughts and freezing him in place. The loop broke when Go shifted under Chase's hand, muttering something unintelligible ending with Chase's name. Chase shook his head, clearing it.

"Come on," he said quietly, and coaxed Go far enough into wakefulness to get him down the hall and onto the bed. Chase curled around him, pulling the blanket over them both, and ignored the insistent inner prompting driving him to take action regarding the still-functioning Roidmude. It could wait.

* * *

Note: this is exactly how not to handle a potential head injury with an altered level of consciousness, ok, if this happens to someone you know, you take that person to an ER _immediately. _


	9. Go: Magnetic

Go wasn't entirely sure he hadn't been run over by a truck; he thought he remembered dodging the Roidmude's ridiculously overpowered hits, and he couldn't see any evidence of bruising, but he hurt all over. The pain persisted, lingering in his joints and muscles, twinging when he moved too suddenly and making it extremely difficult to film the climbing video he'd had planned. Chase had been there when Go had woken up, pretending he hadn't been watching Go sleep, but by the time Go showered and dressed, Chase had vanished again.

Shin's concerned look when he'd found Go in the Drive Pit conducting minor repairs on the Ride Macher had just fueled Go's insistence that everything was fine. Shin looked dubiously at him; Go straightened up and suppressed a wince.

"The third Roidmude," Shin started, very obviously changing the subject.

"We haven't found a heavy acceleration field, right?" Go said. The bike was fine; aside from replacing a fuel line, the only damage had been cosmetic. Even the fuel line hadn't been entirely unsalvageable – Go just didn't want to see it give way at some unspecified point in the future.

"Not once," Shin confirmed. "Kyu has some thoughts about how pinging the viral Cores, but I'm not entirely sure what he means by that."

Go thought he did. "Does he want some help?" he asked.

Shin tossed a half-melted lump of metal at him. Go caught it easily and then had to keep his arm straight for a long, awkward moment when his elbow protested the abrupt addition of extra weight. He bent it carefully, pulling what he could now identify as the second Roidmude's Core closer. "This one's in better shape," he said.

"Kyu's on his way down," Shin said, watching Go with an altogether too thoughtful expression. Go tossed the Core up and down a few times just to prove there was nothing wrong with him. "You're going to drop that," Shin said, just as Go nearly did.

"No, I won't," he said, just a few beats too late, remains of the Core safely in both hands.

"….and I told you that's not how it works!" Rinna came storming through the door, shouting over her shoulder, and for a moment, Go thought he'd horribly misheard Kyu's name. He was proven wrong when Kyu followed Rinna, gesturing wildly.

"That is exactly how it works," Kyu said, and then his eyes fell on the twisted lump of metal in Go's hands. "Look!" He yanked it away, and Go, surprised, let it go. "Hi, Go," Kyu said absently. "How's it going." Without waiting for an answer, he pointed toward the Core and rounded on Rinna.

"I'll, uh." Shin glanced between the arguing pair and the door. "I'll just leave you to it."

"Oh, thank you," Go said drily. Shin had the grace to look slightly embarrassed before he beat a hasty retreat, and Go found himself embroiled in a heated discussion of what would and wouldn't be an effective use of their limited resources.

The problem with Kyu's idea was that it required materials they didn't have on hand, and the problem with Rinna's solution was that it had a high possibility of disrupting the city's entire power grid. Rinna felt the risk was acceptable and that Go's description of the risk as high was excessive, while Kyu felt that Go's assessment of their probability of acquiring the necessary materials as minimal to be overly pessimistic.

"What's your solution, then?" Kyu asked, after the three of them had been over the same ground with no progress for what seemed like hours.

Go rubbed at his eyes; they felt sticky and he couldn't quite keep the different arguments straight. "I don't know," he muttered. "What we need is to figure out how to get a return signal from the code we already know is there."

"Huh," Kyu said after a moment, and turned to the Core. Most of their attempts to pull something usable out of it had failed; it was damaged beyond repair, even if it hadn't been an unholy amalgamation of multiple Cores to begin with. At least, that was Go's assumption and he was running with it, no matter what anyone else said about combining bits and pieces of no-longer-functioning Cores not being possible.

"You're right," Rinna said, and while Go was fairly sure he hadn't missed any verbal statements, he was utterly lost.

"What?" he said.

"Look." Kyu pointed, and when Go frowned, he pulled up another display. "See? Here."

The lines of code blurred together, refusing to stabilize into something that made sense. Go rubbed his eyes again, and then he thought he saw it. "You mean," he said, and pointed.

"Oh, yeah, that too," Kyu said, and launched into an explanation.

Go would have been insulted, except that he couldn't follow what Kyu and Rinna had apparently simply noticed until Kyu took him through it step by step. "That's brilliant," he said.

"No, brilliant is your little addition," Kyu said, grinning, and Go finally saw how it all fell together.

"If you're done congratulating each other," Rinna said, and Go peered over her shoulder. While they'd been talking, she had started to set up the program. "Kyu, you're going to have to do the fine parts here, but if I build the detector according to these specifications, we're going to be able to find the thing before it comes out of hiding."

Kyu rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Go, if you want to go tell Tomari that we've made some progress, I think we've got it from here."

It was entirely possible that either the coding or constructing the makeshift detector would have gone more smoothly with another pair of hands, but Go was tired enough that assuming the other two had things well in hand was the far more attractive option. "I can just text him, and give you a hand," he said anyway.

Rinna eyed him. "I'd rather have you on hand to smash that thing to bits, when we find it," she said. "Something about these Cores doesn't feel right, and the sooner we destroy them, the better. And frankly, you look worn out."

There were days when Go would argue that he had more to offer than being pointed at something in order to blow it up, but this was not one of those days. If Rinna felt she and Kyu were up to the task of creating a Roidmude detector, he was going to believe them. "Yes, ma'am," he said, with a half-sketched and sloppy salute.

Rinna smiled playfully. "Terrible," she said. "Go talk to Tomari and we'll let you know when the detector is finished."

"We'll be waiting," Go said. Shin wasn't hard to find, but he had more questions than Go could thoroughly answer. Go could almost see the thoughts whirling around his head, not quite falling into a reasonable pattern.

"I keep thinking we're missing something," Shin said, staring at the air around him as though a pattern would fall into place if he glared at it hard enough.

Go batted aside one of Shin's visualizations; it shimmered against the fall for a second before fading away.

"Hey," Shin said. "I was using that."

"When Rinna and Kyu find the third Roidmude, we'll be able to catch it," Go said. "We can act, instead of reacting."

"If they find it in time," Shin said with uncharacteristic pessimism. He glanced around the empty office, and Go could all but see him dismiss his visualizations until he could look at them from another angle or add another piece of information. "It might show up again before they're ready, if it takes them as much time as I think it will to put this new detector together."

"Yeah, but the Roidmude took some pretty heavy damage, didn't it?" Go's memory of the fight was a little hazy, but he was sure he'd seen Drive hit the Roidmude hard enough to leave some sort of mark at least once.

"And yet I'm the one with bruises," Shin muttered. "If Chase hadn't tried to smash it to pieces while I had it trapped, we would be having a very different conversation."

Go blinked. "Why did he –"

Shin shrugged. "I think it made him nervous. He seemed to think we wouldn't be able to keep it contained, and I didn't push. It didn't matter at that point." He gave Go the same considering look Rinna had graced him with. "What about you?"

"What about me?" Go returned. "You just said you were the one who ended up injured."

"Minor," Shin said, waving a dismissive hand. "You went down pretty hard afterwards. You sure there's nothing going on?"

Go could have screamed in frustration.

The nearly two weeks between the first revived Roidmude incident and the second didn't specifically count as a pattern, but Go found himself expecting the third Roidmude to return in the same timeframe anyway. He had to remind himself that there were no guarantees, and that these new composite Roidmudes weren't acting in the same patterns as their predecessors had. He found himself at the location of the second fight standing opposite Kano, still roped off two days later, searching for some sign of what their intent had been.

"No heavy acceleration field," Kano reported.

"Didn't expect one," Go said. Kano had all of the equipment and was actually taking measurements of the area; Go was simply there to see if he could intuit anything useful. So far, all he saw was that they'd smashed up the street distressingly well.

"I don't see anything that could constitute a target." Kano sounded frustrated, and Go couldn't blame him. For all that he'd gotten to know Kano fairly well before he'd revived Chase, it was still odd to hear him speak in natural human tones, as if Kano were the copy and Chase the original.

"They knocked out part of the power grid," Go said, not approaching the carefully roped off area. The power lines had been restored, but the cold made it difficult to do the same for the broken street. "That was how Shin knew they were there."

"But why?" Kano didn't quite kick the nearest piece of rubble in frustration, but Go saw his foot twitch. "If they had something to do, we never would have known they were here without the heavy acceleration field."

"I don't know." The area the Roidmudes had decided to demolish was mainly residential, although it had an NTT broadcast tower on one end and a temple with its associated cemetery on the other. The entire wall along one side of the cemetery had been broken, cracked where it hadn't been shattered when Go had been thrown into it, and the broadcast tower wasn't broadcasting until repairs could be conducted. It at least seemed structurally sound.

"Detective Tomari is sure there's a definite plan," Kano said.

"Of course Shin thinks there's a definite plan," Go said absently, staring at the broadcast tower. "They always had a plan, even when it wasn't the same plan that Heart or Brain or Medic had."

"It looks like they're actively trying to get your attention," Kano said.

Go blinked. "Like what, now?"

Kano tilted his head to the side in a very Chase-like gesture. "The first time they showed up, they created a lot of noise but not a lot of widespread damage."

Go thought he remembered water mains being broken and wasn't sure that counted as minimal amounts of destruction, but it wasn't on the level of bringing down entire buildings. There had been no deaths and almost no injuries, as far as he knew. "They were loud and flashy, but not." He let his voice trail off. "Huh. Same thing here?"

Kano nodded. "I was looking at some of the footage from this fight."

"What footage?"

"There's a security camera on the tower, there." Kano pointed. "Which isn't working now. And the two intersections there, and there, they both have traffic cameras. None of it is a particularly good angle to see right here, but I could see enough."

"Enough to say what?" Go prompted. He didn't think he was going to like whatever Kano was going to say.

"There were some differences from when the Roidmudes first showed up," Kano said. "Whoever built them made some changes. They were better prepared, better built."

"You're saying that whoever made them is using us to test the – the hybrids?" Go frowned.

"Maybe." Kano shrugged. "Or there's more of a pattern and I can't see it yet."

"Test the hybrids for a specific reason, or do they just want to hunt Kamen Riders." Neither option was particularly attractive. "If they wanted us dead or incapacitated, there are easier ways to do it."

"Not if they don't know who you are," Kano said.

"Everyone knows who Drive is," Go countered. "And it's not hard to find me and Chase by association."

Kano didn't have an answer for that one. "About Chase," he said suddenly.

"Hm?" Go looked up; he'd been about to tell Kano goodbye and thank you and drive back home, since they'd found nothing concrete.

"Are you –" Kano's voice trailed off, and Go glanced over his shoulder. Kano looked uncharacteristically uncertain. "Are you sure everything with – the Roidmudes didn't return until –"

"Hey."

Kano fell silent at Go's single syllable, the soft sound cutting across Kano's hesitant voice despite its low volume.

"Chase is our ally," Go said, in the same soft voice. Of course Kano was suspicious; the timing even made some sort of sense, and Kano didn't know Chase the way the rest of them did. It had to be eerie, for Kano to see a copy of his face and body walking around, and it was understandable that he would look at Chase with different eyes than the rest of them. "He wouldn't betray us. He's not involved in this."

"His programming has been altered before," Kano said, stubborn now and sounding much less uncertain. "I just think we should make sure."

"I checked his programming," Go said. He'd done the tests, he'd run through the code, he knew what was inside Chase's head, so to speak. "When we brought him back, before we left the Drive Pit. I wouldn't have let him leave if there had been something wrong."

Kano's lips thinned, and Go could read volumes in what Kano didn't say.

"You're not objective about him, either," he said, and jammed his helmet over his head before Kano could reply. The Ride Macher roared to life under him and Go drove away before he could say something he would regret.

To make matters worse, Chase vanishing the morning after the fight was turning into more of a status quo than a one-time incident. He had apparently devoted his energy to making himself scarce as February ran into March while Go waited for the Special Investigation Unit to finish work on the detector, or the Roidmudes to strike again, or for anything to break the tense holding pattern of anticipating enemy action. The weather warmed, the frequent rainfalls becoming merely chilly and unpleasant instead of resembling driving needles of ice, and Chase spent more time out of Go's apartment than in it.

"You're being dramatic," Go said, out loud, to himself, at the sight of his dark and cold apartment on the fourth night running. He rubbed his eyes; he'd been running in late afternoon rather than early morning, simply because it had been raining every morning for the past week only to clear up later in the day, and it was wreaking merry havoc with his general wellbeing. Coming home to find Chase not there wasn't helping. "Why is it still so fucking cold."

Despite the run, Go felt chilled down to his bones; he'd finally filmed the urban climb video beforehand and decided that a change of scenery was in order, instead of following his now-usual path near his apartment, and the rain had started again as he was driving home. His camera was safely dry and intact inside his jacket, and he left it on the kitchen table before stripping out of his damp clothing.

A bath was too much work, he decided; he had the video to edit, and the kotatsu was warm enough. Go showered quickly, dressing in the cool air of the bedroom, and settled in to get some work done. His thoughts kept drifting to Chase instead; it felt like the only time he ever saw his friend – boyfriend? his mind supplied – was when Chase crawled into his bed in the middle of the night. Sometimes he was still there in the morning.

As if on cue, the apartment door opened just as Go gave up on getting any more work done. His concentration was entirely shot, and he wasn't going to produce anything worth seeing. He closed the laptop to the sound of Chase's politely quiet footsteps drifting down the hall.

"Welcome back," he said, extricating himself from the kotatsu and walking toward the door.

Chase was soaked, from the tips of his hair down to the hems of his artfully distressed jeans, as if he'd been out in the rain without an umbrella and without the sense to keep himself dry.

"What happened to you?" Go asked.

"The weather is unpleasant," Chase said. It wouldn't have sounded like an evasion, but Kano's words had been echoing in the back of Go's mind for days.

"Yeah, but what were you doing?" he pressed.

"Working," Chase said, and that was a perfectly reasonable answer. He had been changing jobs with astounding rapidity since he'd been back. "I start classes in April, and then I will be less able to make financial contributions."

Go closed his mouth with a snap. "Oh," he finally managed. "Wait, classes?"

Still dripping all over the floor, Chase nodded. "I will learn how to be a paramedic," he said.

"What," Go said, but it made the kind of sense that Chase tended to make. "You did say you didn't want to fight," he added, and then the growing puddle on the floor reached his toes. Go yelped in surprise. "Go put on something dry!"

By the time the floor was less of a hazard and Chase's clothes had been spread over the unused bathtub in an attempt to dry them out, Go had managed to banish Kano's suspicions to the ether where they belonged. "Are you sure you want me to get dressed?" Chase asked, as Go re-emerged into the hallway and stared. Chase had declined to do so much as pull the nearest set of clean clothing out of the closet; he was lounging against the bedroom door in nothing but his own skin.

"I can think of better ideas," Go said.

Chase regarded him for a few seconds. "You're propositioning me," he said, sounding almost pleased. It was as positive as he ever sounded, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a tiny smile when Go smirked at him.

"Yeah, I am," he said. "You were inviting it."

"Yes," Chase said, and let Go pull him into the bedroom. His bed was closer to the door, and Go pushed him down on it. Chase went willingly, fingers hooked into Go's belt-loops and mouth pressed against Go's lips.

Chase's skin was soft and smooth under his hands, still damp and cool. Go trailed his hands downwards, one thumb brushing across Chase's nipple, feeling it grow hard and erect under his touch. Warmth began to build, displacing the leftover chill, and Go pulled back just enough to breathe.

"This seems unequitable," Chase said suddenly, and Go froze. "You're still clothed," Chase added, sliding his hands under Go's jacket and trying to tug it off. All that happened was a tangled mess, and by the time Go had gotten out of both the t-shirt and the hoodie, he was mortally certain they were entirely ruined.

"Is that better?" he asked, because he wasn't entirely sure Chase wasn't laughing.

"I like you like this," Chase said, completely serious, and warmth suffused Go's entire being.

"I like you like this too," he murmured, and Chase smiled with heart-stopping sweetness. Whatever price Go had to pay to have Chase was worth it, he thought fiercely, and Chase groaned underneath him. Go loosened his grip. "I – did I hurt you?" he asked, but Chase was looking at him with his pupils blown wide in an eerily human reaction.

"Do that again," Chase said, voice deep and rough, and Go didn't need any further encouragement.

Afterwards, Go curled around Chase, hands resting lightly on miraculously unmarked skin. "You're perfect, you know," he muttered against the back of Chase's neck, too quietly for Chase to hear. Chase shifted around to face him anyway, tracing the edges of the marks he'd left.

"Does it hurt?" Chase asked, and Go hadn't expected that at all.

"I like it when it hurts," he said after a moment. "I'll tell you if you do something I don't want you to," he added, because Chase was giving him a look that meant Go had said something he didn't like. It didn't quite clear Chase's expression, so Go kissed him again. "You make me happy," he said, and that seemed to help a little.

"I want –" Chase started, and then, maddeningly, fell silent. "I have to go," he said, when Go opened his mouth to ask him what, exactly, he wanted, and Go was left wondering if he'd done something wrong. Chase was back in his bed when he woke in the morning, though. Go tried and failed not to think about it too much at first, and then decided that it was something he needed to know.

Trying to figure out what it was that Chase wanted was surprisingly difficult; Chase seemed almost deliberately obtuse on the subject, answering as though Go was asking about Chase's state of mind at that particular moment and avoiding the topic of the future entirely. It wasn't reassuring, even if Chase was perfectly normal in every other way. Go began to reach the conclusion that Chase was seeing a problem that he wasn't, and he couldn't figure out what it was, and the stress of it was exhausting.

The day Go received a text that the detector was nearly ready dawned sunny and bright for the first time in what felt like weeks, and Chase was not only still there when Go woke up but elected to join him on his morning run. Construction on the route Go usually chose sent him down another street, and Go discovered what looked like a park with a basketball court. Someone had left a basketball wedged under the fence, and Go looked up and down the street before hopping over said fence.

"Go?" Chase was giving him that slightly lost look, the one that he had been showing less and less as he got used to life without – with minimal Roidmude interference.

"Come on." Go had seen Chase play basketball on at least one occasion, although he didn't think Chase had kept the memories afterwards. Go felt privately that Angel had been the wrong name for a Roidmude who had wanted to bring about peace by literally eating her compatriots and raining destruction on everything else. "Then again, angels are supposed to be terrifying."

"What?" Chase said, perched on top of the fence.

"Nothing." Go hadn't realized he'd said anything else out loud. He waved broadly, trying to cover up his lapse. "Get in here."

"Are – is entry to this area permitted?" Chase hopped down inside the fence with economic grace, wasting no energy. Go watched appreciatively, and Chase started to eye him with wariness. "Did you have something else in mind?" Chase asked hesitantly.

"What? No!" Go was blushing again, he could tell. "I'm not an exhibitionist, I just – I like the way you move."

"How I move?" Chase blinked, wearing the bare edges of a nonplussed expression.

"Forget it," Go muttered, and crouched down under the fence to retrieve the basketball. It was almost no worse for the wear, although it had deflated just enough to be noticeable. He bounced it a few times, but it was still fairly usable. "You know how this game works?"

"I believe I'm familiar with the rules, although it requires a five-man team," Chase said.

"Well, you and I are going to play one on one," Go said, and took off down the court without warning. Chase picked up on the modified rules – such as they were – with the quickness Go expected. He was better at the game than Go was, too, his reflexes faster and his stamina apparently had no bounds. Go called a halt when he was more points down than he cared to think about and thoroughly out of breath. "Good game," he said, leaving the ball on the edge of the court.

"What is this?" Chase had come up behind him while Go wasn't looking, and when Go turned around Chase was close enough to cup Go's jaw in one hand and run the fingers of his other along Go's sweat-soaked hairline.

"What's what?" It was Go's turn to be confused. Turn about is fair play.

"You're wet." Chase's deep voice sent shivery little feelings through Go's midsection. "I have noticed it before," he added.

"Sweat," Go said, and then he had to explain what he remembered about how the human body kept itself in equilibrium, which was definitely enough to kill any sense of libido that might have been aroused otherwise. Go led them down the street and back towards home during the conversation.

"It has an interesting scent," Chase said, as they crossed the building parking lot.

"Yeah, that's kind of a side effect," Go said. "Sorry, I'll shower as soon as we get upstairs."

"I like it," Chase said, and Go blushed again.

"I don't have to shower right away," he said, because there were numerous other activities he could think of, and that was the moment his phone pinged with an incoming text from one of the Special Investigation Unit. Go groaned, pulling it out of his pocket. "Chase," he said, waving the phone. "They want you at the Drive Pit."

Chase had his own phone in hand, although Go hadn't heard it make any sort of noise, already tapping out a message. "I know," he said. Testing the detector required a Core, which meant Chase. Go opted to shower after all before following him, wearing a heavier jacket than his usual hoodie to keep the wind off. Blue skies did not necessarily mean warm weather, and the first couple of weeks of March still counted as winter in his book. Chase walked into the Drive Pit with completely blank body language, face expressionless. Go frowned at his back; not that Chase was ever expressive, but he'd been warmer since he'd come back.

"I'm ready," Chase said. "What do you need me to do?"

What Rinna wanted, it turned out, was for Chase to stand first in specific locations in his human form so the detector could be calibrated, and then to go somewhere within a certain range without telling them where so that the device could be tested. Go opted to stay in the Drive Pit, watching the test with interest.

The detector pinged off Chase's Core for both known-location tests, but when Rinna instructed Chase to, essentially, hide somewhere, the detector failed to pick up what Kyu had dubbed the Core's signature.

"Why," Kyu said, staring at the machine in frustration. "What are we missing?"

"The ambient radiation," Rinna started, and Kyu leaned over her shoulder to peer at the readout.

"What if," he said, and Rinna nodded.

"Tell Chase not to move," she said, and Go was fairly sure she was talking to him for all that she was apparently focused entirely on the screen in front of her.

It took over an hour for the two members of the Special Investigation Unit to declare the test a partial failure and release Chase back to his original plans for the day. Go thought he knew what the problem was, but neither of the others felt his ideas had merit.

"Fine," he said eventually. "Then let me have a copy of the code and work it out, and we can run it as a backup."

"You're going to break my machine," Rinna muttered under her breath. Go didn't think he was supposed to hear her, especially when she agreed in a louder voice.

It was almost nostalgic, sitting at his former workstation; Go hadn't cleared it away after he'd finally succeeded in resurrecting Chase, and no one else had rearranged the Drive Pit either. It was dusty, but the equipment booted up without hesitation, and Go slid into his seat with the ease of long familiarity. He had spent enough time staring over Kyu's shoulder to know exactly where he wanted to start working, and he fell into the rhythm of the previous fall more quickly than he'd anticipated.

"Go," he heard some time later, the single syllable layered with impatience.

"Huh?" Go looked up. He was almost finished with the first part of the solution. "Just a second." The last phrases went into their respective slots and he started the process of compiling the code. "Yeah?"

"Go," Chase said again, and Go blinked. Rinna and Kyu had migrated to the other side of the Drive Pit, and Chase was standing expectantly behind him. He wasn't dressed for the weather, wearing jeans and a solid purple t-shirt that Go vaguely remembered seeing in the closet, but it wasn't like Chase noticed the temperature as much as the rest of them.

"How long have you been there?"

Chase opened his mouth to answer.

"No, don't tell me." Go stretched. "What's up?"

"Your sister is expecting us," Chase said, and Go realized with a guilty start that he'd completely forgotten about his sister's invitation. She'd started back at work, which had gone as smoothly as Go might have expected – which was to say there had been unforeseen and tiny but numerous snags in the process – and he'd seen less of her as a result.

"Right." Go pulled at his own shirt; it was clean, and it wasn't as though Kiriko would expect him to show up looking pretty. "I can't do anything else with this right now anyway."

Chase eyed him.

"I'm not – look, I want this Roidmude stuff to end," Go said. "We were supposed to be done with it. It was supposed to be over."

Chase simply looked at him, and Go massaged the bridge of his nose.

"I wasn't talking about you," he said. "You're different. You're you."

"We're late," was all Chase said, but Go couldn't help feeling as though he'd made a misstep. He didn't think he was wrong, that was the problem; it wasn't that he didn't like fighting as Mach, it was that he wanted the Roidmudes gone. With the sole exception of Chase, and possibly Heart, they had been twisted creations bound up in his father's irrational hatred of humanity. Or the world. Or something. Go wasn't entirely sure, and he didn't care.

The conversation and resulting thoughts left Go in the wrong mood for socializing, but he plastered a smile on his face anyway before knocking on Kiriko's door. Shin pulled it open, balancing Eiji on one hip, and Go was able to return his wide smile with a more genuine expression.

"He's been fussy," Shin said. As if on cue, Eiji started crying. "No, no, come on," Shin said, and moved away from the door. Go followed, letting Chase close the door behind them. Shin dangled something plastic and brightly colored in front of Eiji, and that seemed to be enough of a distraction. Or maybe it was just that Eiji couldn't cry quite so loudly while enthusiastically chewing on the toy, it was hard to say.

Kiriko emerged from the kitchen. "Pizza," she said. "Work ran late today."

"You say that like I'm going to complain," Go said, and Kiriko gave him one of her rare smiles. "How's being back at work?" he asked. Kiriko took the bit and ran with it, talking nearly a mile a minute as she pressed both Go and Chase into ferrying dishes out to the table.

"It's a little strange," Shin said eventually. "Not what I expected, at first."

"You knew what you were getting when you married me," Kiriko said, but there was no bite to the words.

"I got exactly what I wanted when I married you," Shin said, with the most ridiculous smile, undampened even by Eiji flinging the solid part of his dinner across the table and giggling. Chase watched the byplay with a look that could only be described as curiosity, and Go couldn't help laughing at it.

"Don't encourage him," Kiriko said, and for a moment Go thought she was talking about Chase. Eiji's giggles got higher in pitch, and Go realized that his nephew had taken his laughter as approval of the flung pieces of dessert.

"Sorry," he said, trying to look contrite. From the expression on Kiriko's face, he was fairly sure he was failing miserably. Chase had gone from curious to the face he made when he was observing and storing information for later use, and Go made a mental note to find out exactly what Chase thought he'd learned before it turned into some sort of misunderstanding. Even if it was likely to be a hilarious misunderstanding. "I'll help clean up?"

"As if there was any question," Kiriko told him. Go shooed Chase into the living room with Shin and Eiji, feeling that too many people underfoot would slow down the process rather than expedite it, and by the time he and Kiriko finished with the admittedly small mess dinner had left, Shin had gotten Eiji relatively calm and quiet.

"Movie?" Shin said, waving a DVD case for one of Go's favorites.

Go sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch, pulling Chase down next to him. He had to be in the right mood to actually sit through an entire film; he got enough enforced idleness through half of his job to want to include it in his recreation, too, but even though he'd spent most of the day hunched over a desk, he didn't really want to move. He felt rather than saw Kiriko curl up behind him, and Shin settled next to her after dimming the lights.

Within a few minutes, Go felt that dimming the lights had been a mistake; it just reminded him that he had started the day tired and it hadn't improved from there. He suppressed a yawn as the opening credits rolled, and somehow found that he'd shifted closer to Chase. The other man – and when, specifically, had he stopped thinking of Chase as a Roidmude? – glanced over at him, the movement barely visible at the edge of Go's vision, and put an arm over Go's shoulder.

Chase was warm, and comfortable, and the next thing Go was really aware of was the lights pressing against his eyelids and footsteps crossing the floor. He blinked, eyes feeling dry and scratchy, trying to re-adjust to the brightness. "Sorry," he muttered, levering himself back upright. The end credits were scrolling across the screen; he'd managed to miss all of it.

Kiriko reached down and ruffled his hair. "Go home and sleep in your own bed," she said, playfully enough that Go knew she wasn't upset.

"Probably a good idea." He stretched, feeling the blood flow back into his fingers and toes. Some of the leaden weight of fatigue was gone, but the sandy sensation in his eyes persisted. He rubbed at them a little. "It's been a long week. Month. Day. Whatever."

"Your engagement in certain extracurricular activities has been putting a drain on your energy levels," Chase said unexpectedly, somehow managing to rake his gaze suggestively down Go's torso and back up again while keeping a completely straight face.

Go opened his mouth and shut it again; what Chase sounded like he was implying wasn't precisely what had been happening – or, it had, but that wasn't the reason he was apparently losing sleep, and it didn't matter anyway because his sister wasn't supposed to know. He tried again, but couldn't get a coherent word out beyond a strangled "Chase!" that wasn't helping the situation. He could feel his face flushing hot in what he couldn't deny was shame.

"Go," Kiriko said, and then, "Would you two give us a moment?"

There wasn't much space for Shin to give them; Go watched miserably as Shin pulled Chase to the other side of the room, and almost sullenly climbed to his feet to follow Kiriko toward the kitchen door. She was going to assume that he'd corrupted Chase, and if she didn't, Shin would. His stomach churned in anticipation of Kiriko telling him how much he'd let her down.

"You and Chase, then?" Kiriko said, voice oddly soft for the start of an unpleasant conversation.

There wasn't really any way to deny it. Go nodded, looking at the floor. "I shouldn't –" he started, and Kiriko put a finger against his lips.

"You're my brother and I love you," Kiriko said. "You know that, right?"

She was just making it harder. Go nodded without saying anything. He wasn't sure he would be able to keep his voice from cracking even if he did try to speak.

"Are you…" Kiriko leaned over to peer directly into his face. Go tried to look away, but she took his cheeks in both hands and forced him to face her head on. All he could do was direct his gaze to the side. "Go," she said, and now she looked exasperated. "You – there are things about you that drive me crazy, but you liking boys isn't one of them. It never was."

Wait, what? Go blinked, sure he'd misheard something. "What?" he said, and then something else struck him. "You knew?"

"Of course I knew." She let go of his face, putting her hands on her hips instead. "I'm your older sister. I know everything."

"But," he said.

"I want you to be happy," Kiriko said. "If being with Chase makes you happy, then I want you to be with Chase."

"But," Go said again. No part of this conversation was going as he'd expected; even in America, where the mindset toward non-standard relationships was as wide-open as the Arizona sky when compared to Japan, he'd gotten flack if he'd been openly affectionate with Ethan in public.

"Who exactly do you think you're talking to?" Kiriko said, and Go threw his arms around her. She hugged him back, and his fears suddenly seemed unfounded and silly. Kiriko was as much of an oddball as he was, Go realized, with her insistence on continuing to work even after marriage and a kid. Even if the rest of the world rejected him for what he was, he wasn't going to lose his family. Relief washed over him, leaving him light-headed in its wake.

"So," he said, after she gently extricated herself and pretended she didn't see him swipe a hand across his eyes. "Um. Chase. We, uh. Yeah." He felt himself smile, almost giddy in the release of tension.

"I see why you like him," Kiriko said, eyeing Chase speculatively. "He's very pretty."

"Kiriko!" He was blushing, he could tell. Kiriko giggled.

"The look on your face," she said, but it was nice to see her smile. "He really is pretty, though."

"Shin," Go said abruptly, gaze sliding to Kiriko's husband and his ersatz older brother. Shin was apparently deeply absorbed in conversation with Chase, who was wearing the expression that meant he wasn't sure whether or not Shin was pulling his leg.

"What about him?" Kiriko glanced over to the pair, following his gaze. "Oh, he knows. He's known for years."

Go padded across the room and pulled Shin into a rough hug mid-sentence.

"…and don't forget it," Shin said over Go's head.

"No groping my husband," Kiriko said from behind him.

"I wouldn't," Go muttered. Shin had hugged him back, too, without reservation, and the understanding that he really wasn't going to lose his family settled around him.

"What, he's not pretty enough to grope?" Kiriko was enjoying Go's discomfort entirely too much, he felt.

"Yes, I am," Shin said, and then, "No, wait."

"Rude," Go said to his sister, letting Shin go. She just smirked at him, which was uncalled for. "I'm going home," he added.

"Next week it's your turn to play host," Kiriko said.

"I don't remember agreeing to that," he told her.

"We'll see you at seven," Kiriko said, as though he hadn't said anything at all. "Tuesday."

"You know I'm going to see you at work before then, right? Both of you?"

"I'm looking forward to it." Kiriko reached up to ruffle his hair. "Get some rest."

Go resigned himself to his fate. "See you guys later," he said, and stuffed his feet into his shoes before Kiriko could surprise him with anything else. "Chase? You coming?"

Chase twitched slightly, as though he hadn't been paying attention to the byplay, but he followed Go out the door and down to the parking lot. "Shinnosuke has entrusted me with your emotional wellbeing," he said, hovering next to the Ride Chaser with his helmet in his hands.

"He did what?" Go was repeating that word far more often than he was comfortable with.

"He said." Chase paused, as if searching for the words. "I was instructed to ensure your happiness," he said finally. "And that Shinnosuke would be extremely disappointed if I mishandled you. I am uncertain as to whether or not that constitutes a threat."

"He likes you too, you know." Go pulled on the helmet.

"I don't see how that's relevant. Or explains anything." Chase finally climbed onto his bike.

"Do you –" Go hesitated, and then plunged ahead before Chase could drown him out with the sound of his engine. "Do you want to keep doing this? Us?"

If Go hadn't known Chase as well as he did, he would have thought Chase was perfectly calm, but the stillness before Chase carefully turned to face him told him that Chase was upset about something, and Go had no idea what it was. Unless Chase didn't want to continue with the relationship that they had, in which case Go was going to have to learn how to be miserable all over again. "I," Chase said, voice muffled by the helmet but still clear. "I want you to be with me for as long as you can."

The implications took a moment to settle in, and Go blinked. He hadn't ever considered that Chase was likely to outlive him; the Roidmudes were designed to outlast humans, after all, and even if that hadn't technically been tested, Go was familiar enough with their design to say that there was a very high probability of Chase outliving him by a wide, wide margin. "I didn't," he started, and then the rest of his train of thought caught up with him. He was going to get older, and Chase – wasn't. That's what he's been worried about, he thought. What he didn't want to say. "That's not fair to you," he said softly.

The Ride Chaser roared to life, and Go jammed his helmet on his head and went after it, still half unsure Chase really wanted him to follow. He lingered in the parking lot, the Ride Chaser parked and abandoned with Chase nowhere to be seen, before slowly climbing the three flights of stairs. His door was unlocked, and Chase yanked him inside as soon as Go turned the knob. Any thought Go had had about Chase wanting to get away from him vanished.

"Don't say anything," Chase said, holding Go simultaneously as though he were made of glass and so tightly that Go thought he could shatter under Chase's grip.

"I'm not going anywhere," Go said, and Chase made a sound of either disapproval or protest before shoving Go against the wall and kissing him thoroughly enough to prevent even the slightest semblance of coherent speech. It was some time before Go got the use of his voice back, and by that time he didn't care for talking in the slightest.

The following morning, Chase was gone again, but Go had almost expected it. If Chase was worried about outliving him, it was a problem that could be solved later; or at the very least, Go could demonstrate that he was going to stick around until Chase stopped dealing with the issue by running away from it. And Go, by association.

"Or maybe I just need to pin you down and sit on you until you actually talk to me," Go said to the ceiling. Decision made, he thought briefly about going back to sleep; it wasn't that early, judging by the light outside, but he still wasn't happy about being awake. He groped for his phone, finding it dark and silent and refusing to power up. "Why is your battery dead now," he said to it, and shuffled into the kitchen to plug it in and then toward the bathroom sink to brush his teeth while he waited for enough of a charge to be able to actually use the phone.

Go blinked when he caught sight of his reflection; there were bruises liberally scattered across his torso and one at the base of his throat that couldn't possibly be mistaken for anything other than exactly what it was. "Goddammit, Chase," he said. He didn't think they'd been quite so rough, but he couldn't bring himself to be unhappy about it, either. He was just going to have to find a relatively high-necked shirt. Or refuse to take off his scarf.

Dressed and mostly presentable, Go stared at the coffee maker as it gurgled through its cycle. His phone started beeping with notifications before there was enough coffee in the pot to make a respectable cup, and with a faint sense of regret, Go picked up his phone to check his messages before getting any caffeine at all.

There were several texts, mostly from Kyu and Rinna and one from Shin, telling him that the detector was ready for testing, and would he please bring Chase to the Drive Pit. Go fired off quick replies, shutting down the coffee maker and drinking what had brewed so far both scalding hot and still black before dialing Chase's number. He didn't answer the first time Go called, and he found himself standing in the doorway, frowning at his phone with a burned tongue and one foot halfway into its shoe. "What the hell?"

Chase answered on the second try, sounding distracted, but he acknowledged the message and agreed to meet Go at the Drive Pit before hanging up abruptly. Go stared at the phone again.

"That was weird, right?" he said to his front door. It had no opinion. Go swiped his keys out of the bowl, put his other shoe on, and jogged down the stairs. He definitely needed to figure out how to get Chase to just talk to him; he'd work on it as soon as the issue with the detector was sorted out, Go promised himself, and they'd dealt with the last Roidmude.

Chase had beaten him to the Drive Pit, unexpectedly, and Go found himself standing behind both Rinna and Kyu as they explained the finer points of the test – again – and instructed Chase on where not to go.

"You're certain?" Chase said, and when Rinna nodded decisively, he turned toward the door. Go was standing between him and it, and Chase paused in front of him. "How are you?" he said.

"I – good, I'm good," Go said. "You?" He wasn't sure what to think of the textbook-polite socially-acceptable small-talk conversation opener, but Chase was looking at him as if he'd expected a different answer.

"Then I'll see you later," Chase said, reaching up to drop a light kiss on the corner of Go's mouth. He vanished adroitly out the door before Go could react. He turned to watch Chase leave, realizing only as he turned back that his mouth was stretched wide in a ridiculous smile. Rinna and Kyu were both staring at him, and the smile faded.

"So we'll give him fifteen minutes to get to wherever he's going," Rinna said, just as Kyu opened his mouth.

"Fifteen minutes," Kyu agreed, looking very much like he wanted to say something else.

"Go, I've loaded the secondary modifications you wrote yesterday," Rinna said, and Go blinked.

"Uh, right," he said, and she had argued against those modifications the day before, he was sure of it. "I thought you –"

"Not all of them," Rinna said, and when he leaned over to look at the display, Go could see where she'd taken elements of what he'd done and worked them into the framework she and Kyu had set up. "See?"

"That's actually amazing," Go said, impressed. "I think it's actually going to work."

"Of course it's amazing," Rinna said. "I made it." She picked up the handheld component of the detector and pulled out the cable connecting it to the desktop system. "Now." She hefted it. "There isn't as much range as we'd wanted, but it should work whether or not the Core is active."

"That's – we're going to have to run a search pattern, but that's not hard," Go said. "What's the range?"

The technical discussion carried them through the countdown until Chase should have been in whatever location he'd picked, and neither Rinna nor Kyu said anything about Chase's parting gesture. Go started to relax, assuming they'd perhaps misinterpreted or even missed it entirely, and then Rinna hesitated before giving him the go-ahead to activate the detector.

"What?" Go asked, fingers hovering over the controls.

"Congratulations," Rinna said quietly. Kyu studiously ignored the entire conversation for all that he'd enthusiastically participated in explaining what modifications they'd made to the detector, but he wasn't condemning, either.

"Uh. Thanks," Go said, trying not to be awkward and knowing that he was missing by a mile.

"Ready?" Rinna said, brightly this time. Kyu perked up at her tone, swinging his chair around.

"Here goes nothing," Go said.

For a long moment, there was as little reaction from the detector as there had been during the failed test, but after a tense second, its indicator light flashed brightly and the expected location appeared on the readout.

"It works," Rinna said, staring at it in disbelief, and grabbed Kyu out of his chair in a celebratory hug. She dragged Go into it, too, but Kyu stiffened just slightly when Go touched him, and Go pulled back. "It works," Rinna said again, apparently not having noticed. She poked Go in the shoulder. "Okay, text Chase to go to the next spot."

The detector passed the first three tests and failed the fourth, which was an attempt at the outer edge of its potential range.

"Still," Rinna said. "We're going to be able to find them."

"Pity we can't build another one," Kyu said. The parts just weren't available; Rinna had scavenged the remains of the destroyed Roidmudes to create the one detector they had, and manufacturing more would take time that Go was sure they didn't have.

"So we start looking," he said. The entire city could be covered in a couple of days, even if the composite Roidmude was moving around. It shouldn't be deliberately avoiding a search it didn't know was coming. "Did anyone tell Shin?"

What no one had told Go was that carting the detector around and watching it fail to register any sort of signal was going to be incredibly boring; Shin had taken the first circuit around where he thought the Roidmudes were most likely to be, and Go had picked it up for the second. Shin had looked tired and annoyed, and Go had tried to cheer him up. It hadn't worked.

Less than two hours into his own shift had taught Go in excruciating detail why Shin had looked so annoyed. "At least you got to do half of this from inside the Tridoron," Go muttered. It was cold after dark, no matter that spring was allegedly on its way and he had to keep the Ride Macher's speed down to a relative minimum so as not to overshoot the detector's capabilities.

Does Chase get to take a turn when I'm done, he sent to Shin, waiting at an intersection for the light to change.

Kano's taking round three, Shin sent back. Otta gets round four.

"Huh," Go muttered. He hadn't seen much of Otta, and idly wondered if the older detective was running the search because they didn't trust Chase or because they wanted him available to beat the Roidmude into the ground. "Kano's pessimism is catching." He sent a frowning emoji to Shin just to be obnoxious, but Shin had either put down his phone or was ignoring him deliberately, and Go was fairly sure Shin would have just left him on read if the latter were true.

More time driving slowly down each series of streets on a very conspicuous bike in the freezing cold of mid-March was draining Go's sympathy for Shin, particularly when Shin had at least had the advantage of a heater. The wind picked up just enough to make up for Go's lack of velocity when he stopped at a railroad crossing. He rubbed his arms, trying to generate some warmth, and cursed at it as creatively as he could in both Japanese and English. He didn't feel any warmer, but at least he felt a little better, and he saw movement that was clearly out of the ordinary.

The barriers across the street stopped blinking and rose back up to a vertical position. It would have been perfectly normal, except that the train was still rushing by. Go tightened his grip on the Ride Macher. The detector hadn't so much as peeped in the last few seconds, and he checked it again out of a sense of paranoia. It was dark and silent.

There's something weird going on, he sent to Shin, but the text didn't show as read, and Go shoved his phone back into his pocket in frustration. He thought for a moment about texting Chase, but movement between the train cars caught his eye; someone was standing on the other side of the tracks, gleam from the streetlights that weren't there reflecting off just enough of the outline for Go to tell that it wasn't a human shape. He smacked the side of the detector, but it kept telling him there was nothing to be found. The end of the train finally passed, the loud rattle of its wheels fading into the distance, and the tall figure on the other side of the tracks started running.

"No, you don't," Go muttered, stuffing the detector inside his jacket and revving the Ride Macher's engine. He could catch up with it; there was no way it could run faster than he could drive.

The maybe-Roidmude nearly got away at a five-way intersection, narrow streets barely visible for a block in any direction, but Go caught a glimpse of reflecting light just in time. The roar of his engine echoed through the alley, its claustrophobic confines slowing him down, and Go thought for half a second that he should leave the bike behind and continue on foot.

No, he decided. He was still faster on the bike, and he was catching up to whatever it was that he was chasing. Shin could find him easily enough, through the Driver. The maybe-Roidmude kept doubling back on itself, as if it was trying to lose him, and it was heading into an area of the city Shin had already searched.

Shin needs to know that the detector might not be reliable. Go couldn't text and drive the Ride Macher at the same time, though, and if he stopped even for a second, he was going to lose his opponent. He gritted his teeth and settled for paying very close attention to where he was – a commercial district, one of the loading zones for goods came into the city on a daily basis, with more train tracks than he cared to count and at least a lower chance of involving innocent bystanders in the middle of the night.

The detector beeped inside his jacket, and Go brought the Ride Macher to a screeching halt in the middle of the road. It was flashing multiple signatures at him, each one registering only briefly before fading. "What the hell?" It was too dark to see clearly; the sky might have been clear and the moon nearly full, but it was barely above the horizon, much less high enough to cast any sort of light into the manmade canyons of the city.

"Dammit," Go muttered, and put the detector away. He killed the engine on the bike; according to the detector, the area around him was swarming with Roidmudes, but he couldn't see anything moving. He took his phone out with one hand, keeping it hidden between his body and the bike, hitting Shin's number and trying not to look at the screen. With his other hand, he carefully pulled the Signal Mach Bike out of his pocket. The Driver was already belted around his waist, and he just had to push the jacket up to get at it.

For a heart-stopping second, Go's jacket caught on the edge of the Driver. He nearly dropped the phone trying to untangle it. That's what you get for not just wearing a hoodie, he couldn't help thinking, even if it was too cold for just a hoodie. Shin finally picked up the phone just as Go managed to expose the Driver.

"Go?" He sounded half-awake at best.

"I found something," Go said, and started to slide the Signal Mach Bike into its slot. He didn't get it more than half way before something tackled him from the side and knocked him off the Ride Macher and onto the pavement. Go rolled instinctively to the side, away from whatever it was that had hit him, but he heard the Signal Bike clatter away. He could see it, pale against the darkness, far enough away from whatever had pounced on him that he thought he could reach it. He dove forward, phone forgotten, and something he barely felt shoved him into unrelenting shadow.

Waking up was an unpleasant experience; it took a few minutes for Go to remember why he had been unconscious in the first place and then he was glad to be waking up at all. The space around him was quiet, rustling noises echoing in a way that told him it was huge and mostly empty. When he opened his eyes, the ceiling overhead was lost in the dim edges of the few lights.

There was nothing and no one around, except for the maddening sounds at the edges of his hearing. Go was tied to a chair, the edge of the rope digging into his wrists and ankles, but neither his feet nor his hands had gone numb. Either whoever tied me here doesn't know what they're doing, or I haven't been here long.

The Mach Driver wasn't belted around his waist, but the Signal Mach Bike was clenched in one hand; he could feel it denting the skin of his palms. Looking around a little more produced the sight of the Mach Driver on the floor, as though someone had flung it away in a fit of pique, or maybe they just wanted him to be able to see it but not reach it. Go tugged experimentally at the rope binding his wrists, and came to the conclusion that his assailant didn't know what he – or she – was doing.

There was too much give in the wrong places, and even without letting go of the Signal Bike, it was only a matter of time to work his hands free. The Signal Bike went into his pocket while Go worked the blood back into his hands and the stiffness out, not that there was much need for either, and bent over to untie his feet. Something passed just above his head, close enough to brush against his hair, and clattered against the floor behind him.

"What the fuck," he said, and worked faster. The chair got kicked in the direction of the projectile while Go made a run for the Mach Driver. He got his hands on it and fastened it around his waist, still looking to see what had come after him. There was nothing. "What the fuck," he said again, and the warehouse was dead silent around him.

The projectile, when he found it, turned out to be a small piece of spiky metal glistening with oily liquid that Go was very sure he didn't want to touch. He kicked it under the chair, trying to look in every direction at once, but the quiet was unabated. He slid the Signal Bike into the Driver without activating the transformation and moved to what might have been a sheltered corner. The silence was starting to give him a headache, dull pain pounding in time with his heartbeat.

His phone, when he pulled it out, was smashed beyond repair. The detector was still in his jacket, cracked around the edges, but when Go turned it on out of almost a sense of idle curiosity, it sent back a definite response. There was at least one Roidmude close by. "Well, there's something useful I can do," he said. Hopefully Shin would figure out where he was when the Driver activated; Go checked the direction, slipped out of the warehouse, and took off running.


	10. Tomari: He's A Monster

"He has to be somewhere," Shinnosuke said, frustrated. The Drive Pit was crowded, Kiriko standing by Kano, Kyu and Rinna hovering at the edge of the room, Otta standing as if on guard by the door. "The call just – just cut off."

Shinnosuke had been woken in the early pre-dawn by his cell phone buzzing in his ear; he'd been deeply asleep, and the call had nearly gone to voice mail before he'd gotten to it. He'd been jolted wide awake by Go's name on the screen, though, and that Go hadn't technically answered when Shinnosuke had said hello had sent a shot of adrenaline straight into his gut. By the time the call abruptly ended, Shinnosuke was on his feet and pulling on the closest set of clean clothes he could find, and Kiriko was right beside him.

Finding that Go had sent a text maybe forty minutes before he'd called hadn't calmed either Shinnosuke or Kiriko down in the slightest; they'd left Eiji with Kiriko's retired neighbor – something the lady in question had agreed to in case of emergency, and emergency only – and made tracks for the Drive Pit. Shinnosuke had started calling everyone else before he'd actually gotten out the door, reluctantly relinquishing his phone to Kiriko only when he got behind the wheel.

Chase was nowhere to be found, and he wasn't answering his phone either. Shinnosuke had tried him first, sending a text when the first call hadn't gone through. The second call had gone straight to voice mail, which made trying to get through an exercise in futility. Shinnosuke kept trying anyway, up until he walked into the Drive Pit, and everyone else had raggedly assembled.

"Track the cell phone signal," Kiriko said finally. "It's not technically a misuse of police resources."

Knowing where Go had been searching – at least, where he was supposed to have been searching – narrowed down the area a little, and finding which towers his cell phone had routed through narrowed it down further.

"What was he doing out there?" Shinnosuke slammed his hand on the desk in frustration. The area was at the edge of where he himself had already searched, and it looked like Go had been moving right into the heart of it. "Can we track the Mach Driver?"

"Not until it's activated," came the answer from Krim, better known to Shinnosuke as Mr. Belt. Or at least that was how he always thought of it – him – inside his head. "You know that."

"I know, I know." What was worse, they couldn't detect a heavy acceleration field in the area, and the jury-rigged detector was with Go. "I'm heading out there."

"Shinnosuke," Kiriko said, and then just, "Be careful." She brushed her hand lightly against his, even that much of a gesture too personal, too private to be done in public.

"Keep trying to reach Chase," Shinnosuke said. "Let me know if anything changes."

"I'm coming with you." That was from Kano, dressed impeccably despite having been dragged out of bed before dawn, lips drawn into a firm line. Shinnosuke hesitated for a second before nodding; Kano would, at the very least, not get in the way.

Tridoron made short work of the city streets, quieter at this late hour but never empty, and Shinnosuke reached the district he'd already searched in record time. The Ride Macher was almost immediately visible, knocked over on its side. Shinnosuke set it upright, but there was no other sign of Go in the immediate vicinity.

"He said he found something weird," Shinnosuke said. "Weird, how?"

"You don't think it was a Roidmude?" Krim asked. Kano remained silent, pacing some sort of perimeter around the downed Ride Macher.

"He would have said." Shinnosuke shook his head. There was nothing out of the ordinary that he could see, the area full of warehouses and train tracks and very few streetlights, the pale gray of true dawn casting some areas into deeper shadows while illuminating nothing.

"Are you sure?" Krim apparently wanted to play devil's advocate today, and it was not helpful in the slightest.

"He was chasing something," Shinnosuke returned, biting back the urge to snap. "Or he wouldn't have come back here, to an area I already searched. Dammit, I thought the detector was supposed to be working."

"So you think he was chasing something that might or might not have been a Roidmude," Krim said.

"Maybe." Shinnosuke put his hands on his hips and turned, slowly, looking over the area.

"Here," Kano said, popping up beside him with something in his hand. "His phone's been smashed." He beckoned Shinnosuke over to an otherwise unremarkable piece of pavement, where bits and pieces of what Shinnosuke knew was a sturdy screen were glimmering on the ground. The bulk of the phone was nowhere to be seen. "That's why we couldn't get an exact location off of it."

There was nothing else to be gleaned from that particular bit of pavement. Shinnosuke shook his head. "Spread out and search," he said, although there were only two of them.

"You think we should split up?" Kano asked. He was politely trying to remind Shinnosuke that if whatever it was had gotten the better of Go, while he was presumably alert and looking for trouble, it could very likely overpower each of them as well.

"No. Dammit." Shinnosuke slammed a fist into his palm. "What the hell do you want?" he shouted at the empty stockyard. He didn't expect an answer. He got the barely palpable shift in air pressure that told him instinctively to duck. Experience gave him the dexterity to slide his Shift Car into the Driver and the presence of mind to shout at Kano to watch out before he hit the ground and scrambled to the side. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kano take cover, and then the transformation swept over him.

Shinnosuke's vision cleared in just enough time to dodge again; his assailant was the same Roidmude that had escaped the last time, he thought, but it had changed enough that he wasn't entirely sure. His previous opponent had been small, and fast, and more or less uniform in color. The figure currently trying its best to beat him into the ground was still fast – Type Speed's base form was Shinnosuke's second quickest and he was still having trouble keeping up with it – but it was taller and wider, jagged in color in a way that Shinnosuke couldn't quite parse until it gave him a moment to breathe.

The Roidmude stood opposite Drive, preternaturally still while Shinnosuke caught his breath. It looked raw, he thought – as if it were still in development and the rough edges hadn't been smoothed out. The number plate was still blank, looking almost singed at the edges, and none of its limbs quite matched. Where most of the Roidmudes Shinnosuke had faced had at least some sort of basis in a living creature, this one was a blank-faced amalgamation of nothing, and eerie facsimile of an unfinished doll come to life. It moved smoothly for all of that, without hesitation.

Movement out of the corner of Shinnosuke's eye caught his attention. Kano was doing something; Shinnosuke didn't think the Roidmude could see him from where it was, but he didn't want to take chances.

"You're causing trouble," he said to the Roidmude, which focused its attention back on him, and switched out his Shift Car.

"Shinnosuke," Krim said softly, warning in his voice.

"As long as I have Trailer-Hou, it'll be fine," Shinnosuke muttered back, and started running toward the Roidmude as one set of armor melted away to be replaced by another. Drive Type Formula was rough on the body and did strange things to Shinnosuke's perception, but its advantage here was that it was quicker than the Roidmude. At least, he hoped it was.

The Roidmude dodged neatly, glancing around in what had to be a pattern and what Shinnosuke had a bare half-second to hope wasn't a signal to heretofore unseen Roidmudes before he was swinging Trailer-Hou at its midsection. It dodged, grabbing his wrist and using his momentum to fling him off to the side. Shinnosuke stumbled, just slightly, before wrenching himself around and activating his weapon's Cannon Mode. The Roidmude was caught unawares, taking the first hit directly in the gut but slipping out of the way of the second.

"Watch where you're pointing that thing!" came Kano's voice.

Shinnosuke cursed. He wasn't used to fighting with noncombatants on the field, and for all that Kano was a highly trained and perfectly capable member of the Special Investigation Unit, not having a suit of armor made him a liability.

The Roidmude, to Shinnosuke's eternal disappointment, had been signaling its compatriots; seconds after Kano shouted, the field was swarmed with spindly half-there creatures. If someone had explained, poorly, how to mass-produce a Roidmude before leaving their hapless pupil to carry out its instructions, Shinnosuke felt the result would have looked like the crowd surrounding him and now Kano. Some of them were nothing more than a framework with the bare minimum of support, slow and clumsy. A few looked as though they were nearly finished, but they didn't move with anything resembling the finesse of Shinnosuke's original opponent.

"Get in the Tridoron," he called, because that was the safest place for Kano to be.

"Working on it," Kano called back, and Shinnosuke risked a glance over. The proto-Roidmudes – shock troops – were standing between Kano and the Tridoron, and Shinnosuke didn't think his temporary partner had a shot at clearing them out of the way.

"Any word from Chase," he asked, out of a sense of morbid curiosity. His main opponent was just standing back, watching the shock troops settle into place, and Shinnosuke didn't like what that implied.

"Nothing," Kano said, more layered into his voice than Shinnosuke had the time or inclination to decipher.

"Right." Shinnosuke cracked his neck and glared at Roidmude standing opposite. He mentally dubbed it the general. "Don't die."

"Thanks," Kano said drily, and the fight was on.

The shock troops went down easily to a blast from the Trailer-Hou's Cannon Mode; if Shinnosuke could have perched above the field, he could have picked them off easily. As it was, he got off two shots to partially clear Kano's path before he failed to duck and the general caught him across the shoulder. Shinnosuke went flying, impacting with a freight car and dropping to the ground. Trailer-Hou slipped off his arm, and its protective capabilities went with it.

Shinnosuke dove for the weapon, fingers barely brushing against it before the general stomped down hard and nearly crushed his ribs. He had nowhere to dodge except back into the freight car, and the corrugated metal bit hard into his side, armor or no. Shinnosuke swung wildly with his left hand toward the general's torso in an attention-grabbing feint, and when its face tracked his movement, he drove his right fist straight into its gut. It staggered back just enough to let him re-equip Trailer-Hou.

Checking on Kano nearly cost him another point of damage; Kano was still alive and moving, but Shinnosuke wasn't far enough away from the general to safely divert his attention. It rushed toward him, grabbing him by the throat. The armor prevent it from gripping too tightly, and it realized its tactical error when Shinnosuke fired the Trailer-Hou three times at point-blank range. The general dropped him, backing off, armor smoking slightly, and the mass of shock troops turned their attention from Kano to Shinnosuke.

At least, Shinnosuke thought, several seconds or minutes or maybe hours later, Kano got into the car. At least, he'd seen Kano right up against Tridoron, and none of the shock troops were really paying him any attention. No, they were all focused on Shinnosuke, and even if they went down and stayed that way, there were so many.

"Mr. Belt," Shinnosuke said. "Shifting to Type Spike." A series of rapid blasts from Trailer-Hou didn't clear the field, but it gave him enough breathing room to shift forms again. The drop in speed was immediately apparent, but the rapid spinning of the Spike Tire made it nearly impossible for the shock troops to touch him without being shredded. "Try me now, you bastards," he said.

The general chose that moment to demonstrate why a loss of speed was going to hurt Shinnosuke in the long run; heedless of the damage to its hand, it bodily lifted him and threw him into the same freight car it had knocked him into earlier.

No, Shinnosuke thought dazedly, I went right through the damn thing. The Spike Tire was still spinning, kicking up dust and concrete chunks as he struggled to his feet, and then there was a sudden but welcome respite. Shinnosuke stood, hands on his knees, getting the air back into his abused lungs. The spots in front of his eyes faded, his chest loosened, and he took a running leap toward the now-destroyed freight car. He vaulted over it, landing on its top edge to see that Kano had somehow talked Tridoron into firing its weapons into what remained of the shock troops.

What Kano couldn't see from inside the car, and what Shinnosuke was too slow to prevent, was that the general had produced a cannon from absolutely nowhere and was aiming it toward Tridoron. "Kano!" Shinnosuke shouted.

Time seemed to slow, and Shinnosuke thought for a wild half-instant that the Roidmude had finally activated a heavy acceleration field. He didn't have enough time to reach either the Tridoron or the general, and there was really only one thing he could do. Shinnosuke flipped off the ruined freight car to put himself directly in the path of the inevitable weapons fire. With enough luck, he would make it in time.

The tip of the canon lit up, its glow visible in Shinnosuke's peripheral vision as he raced forward. It was only a few meters, but it seemed like an impossible distance to cover, and he knew that he wasn't going to make it in time. That Tridoron itself would survive was moot; without armor, Kano would be badly hurt at best, and Shinnosuke could not let that happen.

The cannon fired, a loud boom echoing through the stockyard, and Shinnosuke wasn't in position. He skidded to a halt, looking over his shoulder at the entirely intact Tridoron and the smoking hole in the ground on its other side, and swung his gaze back to the general.

The Roidmude was in a heap on the ground, a dozen meters away, and Mach was climbing to his feet. "Did you miss me?" he said, radiating cocky certainty.

"Go!" Relief swept over Shinnosuke in a dizzying wave. "You're all right!"

"Never better!" Mach looked from Shinnosuke to the recovering general. "What about him?"

"Tag team," Shinnosuke said. "Kano, clear the field."

"Understood." The Tridoron picked its way across the uneven pavement, and Shinnosuke fell into step beside Mach.

"Anything I need to know?" Shinnosuke asked.

"Nothing that can't wait," Mach answered. "I woke up tied up in a warehouse. Heard you fighting when I got outside. That's pretty much it."

The Roidmude had regained its feet, cannon starting to glow again, and Shinnosuke lifted his chin. "Yeah, I don't think so," he said to it. As much as he could do on his own, there was nothing he couldn't do as part of a team.

"Take it alive?" Mach asked.

"No," Shinnosuke said. "Its base of operations has to be here. We'll search the area when it's gone."

"Understood." Mach bounced on the balls of his feet. "You go low, I'll go high?"

"That'll get the job done," Shinnosuke said, and charged forward with Mach right on his heels.

The Roidmude was fast, but Mach was faster, and every time he knocked it off balance, Shinnosuke was right there to hit it where it hurt. It was cracked in a dozen places almost before Shinnosuke could blink, leaking fluid that wasn't blood, and wavering under their combined assault. The few remaining shock troops were barely a distraction, hovering at the edges of the confrontation until a white blur tumbled onto the field between Shinnosuke and Mach.

"Chase!" Shinnosuke heard Mach shout, and their rhythm fell apart. Luck gave Shinnosuke a nearly disabling shot at the Roidmude right before it would have fired its cannon directly at Mach, and for the second time its finishing strike went wide. The Roidmude staggered, now shielded from Shinnosuke by the duo of Mach and Chaser, down but not out.

"Pay attention!" Shinnosuke shouted after Mach, but he was focused entirely on Chaser. When Shinnosuke really looked at him, he could see why; Chaser wasn't doing anything. He wasn't heading toward the Roidmude, he wasn't trying to mop up the shock troops, he wasn't even evaluating the situation – he was simply standing rigidly still, in the center of the battlefield, fine tremors visible along his limbs.

"There's something wrong," Mach called back, running toward Chaser. One of the shock troops got in the way, and Shinnosuke wasn't sure Mach even saw it as he knocked it sparking to the ground. "Chase," Mach said again, and a rustling noise caught Shinnosuke's attention.

The general had pulled itself together – again – and was aiming its cannon directly at Mach.

"Worry about him later," Shinnosuke said, trying to project urgency and command into the words, but he knew Mach could see the Roidmude and that if he simply got out of the way, the cannon fire would hit Chaser instead.

"Oh, this is it," Mach muttered, barely audible, and he switched directions mid-stride. Shinnosuke could see his hands on his belt, but he couldn't tell what Mach was trying to do until the Driver called out its transformation announcement.

"Signal Bike, Shift car! Rider: Dead Heat!"

Mach's armor flowed and reformed around him as he raced toward the Roidmude. "Get him out of here!" he called, and Shinnosuke muttered a curse under his breath. Chaser still hadn't moved, and Shinnosuke simply grabbed him by the waist and yanked him backwards. Chaser went limp for a half-second and then grabbed Shinnosuke's forearms tight enough to bruise through the armor.

"Stop," he gasped.

Shinnosuke's grip loosened for a fraction of a second and Chaser drove an elbow toward his ribs. "Stop fighting me!" Shinnosuke hissed, blocking the elbow, and then Mach's shout caught his attention.

The red and white armored form was spinning through the air in Dead Heat's version of Mach's signature full throttle finisher, but instead of extending a foot straight outward to drive the maximum force into the Roidmude, Mach simply crashed recklessly into it. The resulting explosion shook the ground, and Shinnosuke threw a hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the bright flash. He couldn't see if Mach had been caught in the shock wave or not.

Chaser flung Shinnosuke to the side, right into the few shock troops remaining, and Shinnosuke flailed. The dust hadn't settled, blowing past his visor as he tried to extricate himself from the unfinished Roidmudes' grasping claws. He finally managed to put the last one down, its poorly constructed head falling right off its shoulders with a nausea-inducing lurch, and Shinnosuke could finally turn his attention toward the rest of his team.

Chaser had transformed back into Chase, armor gone and face visible, crouched in the gap created by one freight car having smashed into another. The ground in front of him was buckled upwards, the edge of the crater formed by Mach's finishing move blocking Shinnosuke's view of whatever Chase was hunched over; he had a sinking feeling that it was Go, because Mach was nowhere to be seen.

"Chase," Shinnosuke said, his voice sounding muffled in his own ears, and then the noise of sirens resolved out of the background. Shinnosuke released his transformation, letting Drive's armor fall away, and turned toward the approaching squad cars. It was the Special Investigation Unit for the most part, he saw with relief; they would be able to help search the area for any further Roidmude activity, let him maybe locate the Roidmude's base of operations while one of the noncombatants checked Go over.

The pavement was too damaged for any of the squad cars to get particularly close, but Shinnosuke jogged out to meet them. Kano was climbing out of Tridoron when he got there, looking no worse for the wear; he'd been the one to summon the Special Investigation Unit rather than the standard police response, then. Shinnosuke gave him a thumbs-up, which Kano returned without expression.

The last figure climbing out of a squad car made Shinnosuke blink. "Deputy Commissioner," he said.

"Detective," Honganji returned. He nodded toward the crater. "The rest of your team is over there?" There was a slight hesitation before the word team; Shinnosuke was a law enforcement officer, assigned to a unit, but both Go and Chase were officially consultants and not technically part of any team. For Honganji to use the word was unorthodox, and an acknowledgement of what both of them had done with the Driver system.

"Yes, sir," Shinnosuke said. "I believe the threat has been eliminated, and I would like to search the area for the enemy's base of operations." It was possible that the word enemy was melodramatic. Shinnosuke didn't care. The Roidmudes had caused enough trouble, even if he didn't think they were inherently evil.

"Fine." Honganji nodded. "The details are up to you." He paused. "Do you know who was responsible for resurrecting them?"

"No, sir." Shinnosuke shook his head. "The Roidmude had been upgraded to the point where I didn't feel it was safe to try to capture rather than destroy."

"Someone upgraded it," Honganji said. It was unlikely for the Roidmude to have altered itself, and Shinnosuke knew it.

"I know." Shinnosuke took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm hoping that when we find wherever it was being worked on that we'll be able to figure out who was working on it."

"I trust your judgment," Honganji said. "Carry on."

"Yes, sir." Shinnosuke nodded in acknowledgement and gathered the rest of the team. He gave them their instructions, setting them up in pairs to run a search pattern backed by the officers who'd also arrived on the scene; no team was to go anywhere without at least one member of the Special Investigation Unit on hand, in case of unforeseen complications. "And you come with me," he said to the final group, which consisted of a pair of paramedics who might or might not be needed for whatever was wrong with Go. That his little brother hadn't come over to see what was going on was beginning to worry Shinnosuke. That Chase hadn't come over to investigate was worrying Shinnosuke.

Chase was still crouched in the same defensive position in which Shinnosuke had last seen him. As far as Shinnosuke could tell, he had barely moved, and he still couldn't see Go. Shinnosuke upped his pace to a jog, skirting the crater until he could see over the pile of rubble. He raised his hand in greeting, trying to catch Chase's attention.

"Hey, Chase!"

The response Shinnosuke got was not what he was expecting; face still utterly blank, Chase aimed the Break Gunner at him and fired. The energy ball splashed into the pavement centimeters from Shinnosuke's feet, and he stumbled to a surprised halt.

"What the hell?" Shinnosuke could see Go now, sprawled half on the ground and wedged between Chase and the freight car behind him. He wasn't moving, and Shinnosuke couldn't tell at a distance whether or not he was breathing. "Chase!" he called sharply. "Go!"

Go didn't so much as twitch, but Chase's eyes snapped over toward Shinnosuke, and he raised the Break Gunner again in a clear threat. If Shinnosuke got any closer, Chase would literally try to kill him.

"Get back," he said to the two paramedics, but they had anticipated his instructions. Both of them had backed off far enough to be unthreatening, near the closest thing to cover. Shinnosuke could see Honganji start forward, and waved him back. "Let me handle this," he called, and got an assenting gesture.

Shinnosuke turned back toward Chase, keeping both hands visible and his posture as relaxed as possible. Chase had glitched, somehow; that was the reasonable explanation. He edged forward, as slowly and smoothly as possible, keeping his eyes fixed on Chase's face.

"Hey, buddy," he said, just loudly enough to be heard. Chase fixed a baleful gaze on him, holding the Break Gunner in a perfectly steady grip. If he'd been human, he wouldn't have been able to hold its weight one-handed as he was for long, and Shinnosuke was forcibly reminded yet again that Chase wasn't technically human, no matter what he looked like. "Everything okay?"

Chase's gaze flitted between Shinnosuke and the officers behind him; none of them had broken off to search the area. They couldn't now, not with an active threat. Shinnosuke didn't have to look at them to know that everyone present had taken up a defensive position, and that scenario wasn't going to lower Chase's hostility level at all.

"How's Go doing?" Shinnosuke was almost past the pavement marked by Chase's warning shot, and he thought if he could get just a little closer, he could disarm Chase without resorting to either the Drive system or a more conventional weapon. Not, he thought, that a conventional weapon would do much damage to Chase, but he didn't want Go caught in the potential crossfire.

Chase's eyes narrowed and his grip on Go tightened. The Break Gunner wavered slightly, its muzzle dipping almost imperceptibly. Shinnosuke still couldn't make out any signs of life on Go at all; aside from the breeze ruffling the edges of his jacket, he was perfectly still. Shinnosuke opened his mouth for another attempt at talking Chase down, and ran into the consequences of not looking where he was going. He stumbled against a piece of displaced rock, and Chase brought his weapon back up.

Shinnosuke dodged to the side, feeling the energy bolt sizzle as it went past, knowing that Chase had missed on purpose. "Dammit, Chase!"

The freight car above Chase shifted ominously, the now-cooling metal bending under its own weight, and Shinnosuke retreated. He needed a strategy, and he needed it before the freight car collapsed and buried his brother and his friend. Chase let him go, mouth still stubbornly shut and Break Gunner still raised in warning.

"I don't know," he said in response to Honganji's question. "I don't know what's wrong with him."

"The best course of action would be to use a sniper," Kano said quietly, angling himself so that Chase wouldn't be able to see his lips move.

"It's Chase," Shinnosuke started hotly.

"Roidmudes explode when they cease functioning," Honganji said. "And then we lose the hostage."

"The hostage has a name," Shinnosuke muttered. "And he's attached to your department."

"So is the perpetrator," Kano returned swiftly.

"Can you incapacitate Chase without deactivating him entirely?" Honganji asked.

"I think I can talk him down," Shinnosuke said. "I wasn't prepared before, but I know what I'm walking into. I think I can get him to cooperate."

"If he's glitched, it might not be that simple." Rinna had ghosted up to join the conversation while Shinnosuke wasn't paying attention. "He won't respond to reason."

"The question still stands," Honganji said mildly, and Shinnosuke flinched. Rinna tapped her lips with one forefinger.

"Because he's wearing a human form, I think so," she said. "He's more vulnerable. A strong enough shock should disrupt him temporarily, long enough for us to restrain him."

"Is that shock going to go through him and into Go?" Shinnosuke asked.

"I'm not sure," Rinna said, after a moment's hesitation. "But I can't think of another way to put him down without actually ki- deactivating him." She coughed slightly, and Shinnosuke heard the word she hadn't wanted to use.

Without killing him.

"He isn't touching Go's skin," Rinna added. "That might help."

"Do you have –" Shinnosuke swallowed. "Do you need to build something, or do you just have it lying around?"

The unspoken question – did you devise something specifically to incapacitate one of our allies – hung in the air, and Rinna hesitated for a moment. "I have something," she said. "Specifically keyed to Chase. It seemed prudent."

"Specifically," Shinnosuke said, and looked over at Honganji. The lack of surprise on his superior's face told Shinnosuke that Honganji had at least authorized if not ordered the countermeasure.

"Don't give me that look," Rinna said sharply. "This situation is exactly why I developed it. It's nonlethal because Chase is our ally, and friend."

"I," Shinnosuke said weakly, and clenched his jaw. He took a deep breath, and then another. "I'll try to talk him down. Get whoever here is the best shot into position, and if he gets a chance, take it."

"Don't worry."

Shinnosuke felt he should have expected Kiriko's voice behind him; he hadn't seen her, in the press of people, and he hadn't been entirely sure that she'd come along at all, but of course she had. It was her husband, and her brother, and her brother's boyfriend on the field. Kiriko wouldn't have been about to stay behind, and that she was a better shot than all three of them was an asset that was going to come in handy now.

"I'll take the shot," she said, face pale and grave. Shinnosuke knew how hard she was suppressing what had to be near-panic at the prospect of losing yet another family member, but her hands were completely steady as she gave him a textbook-perfect salute.

"Are you sure?" Shinnosuke asked.

Kiriko nodded once, and Shinnosuke wanted to take her in his arms and protect her from everything. It wouldn't be fair to her, though; she was just as capable as he was, and she was now the best chance at saving Go if he failed to talk Chase down.

"Permission to try negotiation," Shinnosuke said, turning to Honganji.

"Go," Honganji said, and Shinnosuke stepped into the no-man's-land between the law enforcement perimeter and the shelter of Chase's absurdly defensible position.

Moving slowly with as little threat as possible and keeping his body language open and relaxed did absolutely no good; Chase fired a second warning shot at Shinnosuke's feet at precisely the same distance as he had the first time he had been approached. Shinnosuke paused, talking in a soothing monotone, not really paying attention to what he was actually saying. Chase was repeating his previous actions, which only added credence to the assumption that he had glitched somehow. He could have been caught in a loop, Shinnosuke reasoned, although Chase's programming was supposed to be robust enough to handle stress.

Shinnosuke edged forward, feeling each step out carefully, keeping up the stream of words. Chase focused on him again, the Break Gunner wavering. Shinnosuke glanced at Go; he'd shifted, although Shinnosuke wasn't sure whether it had been purposeful movement or if Chase had just tugged him closer. He was only a few meters away from Chase now, the other man's eyes fixed on him as though Shinnosuke were a lifeline.

"Everything is going to be okay," Shinnosuke said, hoping that he wasn't lying, and he was near enough to hear Chase's breath catch. Where are you, Kiriko? "Put down the weapon, Chase, no one is going to hurt you." Out of the corner of his eye, he could finally see Go's chest slowly rising and falling, and the relief nearly made him trip over his own feet. His abrupt halt in a bid to not move suddenly had the same effect as his earlier stumble, and Chase started to raise the Break Gunner again.

This time, the outcome was different. Kiriko finally took the shot, a tiny dart winging its way in the gap between Shinnosuke and Chase and lodging itself in the bare skin visible above Chase's collarbone. Electricity arced between it and Chase's skin, an obscene yellow glow, and Chase froze. Shinnosuke almost thought he was going to manage to fire the Break Gunner anyway, but it slowly dropped from Chase's nerveless fingers as Chase toppled forward.

"Okay, okay, it's okay," Shinnosuke found himself muttering as he ran forward. Chase was limp, dead weight and hard to handle, but Shinnosuke managed to wrestle him away from Go. "Be okay, be okay, be okay." Go's heartbeat was erratic under Shinnosuke's fingers, and he turned to shout over his shoulder for the paramedics.


	11. Chase (REWIND)

"I'm going with you."

The first time Chase had seen Go, after, he nearly hadn't reached him in time. Chase had felt a queasy lurch, the knowledge settling into him that something was wrong prickling under his skin, and he had raced to find Go. Even then, the sense of wrongness had persisted through the aftermath of the first engagement with a new enemy, itself unsettling in more ways than one. Chase hadn't given much thought to human mortality, not before Deputy Commissioner Honganji had apparently died, and the process of preparing an ally's remains had been nothing short of disquieting.

"Why?" he'd asked Go.

Go had shrugged uncomfortably; he'd stuck by Chase, not touching him but standing far closer than what Chase had been given to understand was polite, and Chase had watched him start to speak on multiple occasions. "It's a way to respect someone's life," he'd said, finally.

"But –" Chase had tried to argue that perception ended with life. He hadn't gotten very far.

"It's more for the living left behind," the priest had said, ghosting up behind them. "It helps us gain closure, and say goodbye." He'd given them both a half smile, and then returned to the ceremony.

"What if there's nothing left?" Chase had asked, voice low, and Go's face had contorted briefly, as though he were suppressing something with every bit of strength he had.

Whether or not Chase would have gotten a reply wasn't a question that would be answered; the ceremony had expanded to include the rest of them, Deputy Commissioner Honganji had risen from the dead in a manner fitting for a man brought to the house of someone who was no longer among the living and yet refused to lie down and die, and Chase had tried to protect Go from the rank abnormality in the only way he knew how. Go had held him back, hadn't wanted him to go near someone who might or might not have been alive, and it had devolved into absurdity.

Sometimes, Chase had thought, absurdity was the only way any of his human friends coped with the process of having emotion at all. He had still been jealous, even at the very end. Even when the rift in time had been more or less repaired, and he'd felt himself begin to dissolve. Even in the face of the naked pain on Go's face, Chase had wanted to feel beyond the stirrings of longing and regret.

"This is goodbye," he'd said, trying to give Go the closure that his friend wouldn't get. He wouldn't leave anything behind, wouldn't leave any tangible proof of his existence. There would be nothing left, nothing to help his friend let him go. He'd known it hadn't helped even as the world dissolved around him.

Underneath the tingling crawl of poisonous yellow electricity arcing under his skin, Chase stirred. Relief warred with apprehension, edged with the memory of fire crawling along the edge of his senses, disrupting his Core, disrupting him, everything crashing crashing

the rest is silence

safe

as long as he stayed submerged

The chains of idle stillness, painful to touch but better than the possibility of before, keeping it from leaching out past his thoughts and tongue and eyes into his hands and leading him down paths better left untread. If he was here, he was safe. Everyone else was safe. Safe, in the quiet, and the nothing, where he couldn't hurt –

memory

The pale gray of false dawn crawling across the sky pinged on Chase's senses, pulling him abruptly out of his recharge cycle. He hadn't thought it was enough physical stimulus to wake him, particularly when he was turned away from the east corner of the south-facing balcony and the curtains were mostly closed. Chase frowned, stretching his limbs out and testing their response. Perhaps something else had woken him, although he couldn't hear anything. Go was presumably asleep in the bedroom, and Chase was struck with a momentary urge to look in on him. He started to stand, and found himself unable to move.

**Did you really think I was gone?**

The voice echoing against his ears was familiar, horribly familiar, and Chase would have closed his eyes in despair if he could have done so much as blink. The still air of Go's living room drifted past his eyeballs, a gentle touch that would become painful over time. "No," he said, and found he could speak.

**Poor delusional little Roidmude.** The voice was silky soft, coaxing and cajoling in a way that Chase hadn't heard it sound for years. **I was part of Hypnos. I'm part of you, too.**

Hypnos – Chase had heard the name, during the tests Go had run on his core programming, heard the story of how Krim's creation had rifled through Go's subconscious to pull Chase's data out of the memory of his death. Go had touched – but refused to elaborate – on the end of that episode, in which Banno had been hiding in Hypnos' programming and Go had nearly died. "You're not part of me," Chase tried to say, but the words fell apart in his mouth.

**Denial doesn't suit you, my little reaper.**

Ashes filled Chase's mouth. Whatever Banno was planning would spell pain and chaos and destruction, and Chase would have no part in it. He opened his mouth to spit defiance, and Banno froze him in his tracks.

**No, I don't think so.**

Chase could only watch as Banno steered his body out of Go's apartment, barely able to spare a fleeting thought of gratitude that Banno left his son sleeping soundly and unawares in the bedroom. Banno knew Go was there, knew and would use the knowledge against Chase. Go was a hostage to Banno's goodwill.

**Don't be ridiculous**, Banno scoffed. **I have plans for him. And for you.**

Chase lifted Go's Mach Driver out of the Ride Macher, taking it with him to a location covered in rust and cobwebs and yet still somehow accessible and left in peace.

**I made many plans**, Banno informed him, and Chase felt him split the Mach Driver open. He railed against the motions of his body, with no success, without even the tiniest hint that he'd had any effect at all. Chase resolved to end Banno's control of him in any way possible, up to and including his own destruction, if it meant keeping Go safe. Banno just laughed.

"Why?" Chase ground out, the control over his throat slackening just enough. He thought he knew what Banno had done to the Mach Driver; without the safeguards that had been added after its initial development, the Driver would push its wearer past his limits. The enhancement of speed and strength would be astounding, but the cost was cumulative and ultimately irreversible damage. "You can't."

**Because he's my son?** Banno asked, almost idly. **Exactly.** He paused. **This is his penance for his betrayal. The rest of you have another reckoning.**

Banno had retreated, once Chase had returned the Mach Driver to the Ride Macher, tugging on the threads of memory until Chase was almost convinced it had been a dream. Roidmudes don't dream, he thought, but when he tried to speak, his tongue tangled up in itself and he could say nothing.

The memories receded, washing into the dark. Banno had wanted out, howling against the inside of his skull, battering itself against what parts of himself Chase had managed to protect until he was overwhelmed. No resources, no recourse, spent, he could only huddle and watch as it picked over his memories and used his hands to complete his tasks, smiling with his mouth as it told Go that he'd gotten a different job this time. Sometimes it was even the truth, Banno allowing him just enough of a leash to taste life, receding into his subconscious and taking his knowledge of his passenger with it.

Go plunged off the side of the roller coaster, vanishing abruptly into nothing, and Chase surged forward. Not like this, he nearly shouted, but Go was clinging to the framework in what was an incalculably small sliver of realized probability. Chase shouted his friend's name, feeling the dizzying sensation of being alone in his own head and almost failing to notice it entirely in relief at seeing Go still alive.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Go said. "Just give me a minute."

Chase pulled Go up out of the abyss, the now-familiar tightening at the back of his mind just barely there. "Don't die," he said, entirely serious.

Something about Banno had shifted, when Chase had been caught up in pure fear that Go was gone, and he was at a minute fraction more of a remove than before. It was barely an edge of difference, but it was just enough for Chase to exert a tiny bit of control. Banno reached through his mind, though, and Chase's awareness of the passenger in his head dimmed again.

Chase dove under the surface, trying to tease out the edges of its nature, follow the thread back to its source, but it slipped away before he could start, and he wondered what he had been trying to do in the first place. How could he have free will and still be compelled to act, to move silently and swiftly to complete the tasks that might someday garner his freedom. Chase would have thrown himself into hellfire to make it stop, but it looped around his tongue until he spoke in riddles or not at all.

"Do you think it's possible that parts of multiple destroyed Cores were fused together to make a functioning Core?"

Go had to know. He clearly understood the process by which Chase had built the three proto-Roidmudes, in minutes and hours stolen from other endeavors, scavenging the city and its stores of refuse for the bits and pieces necessary to cobble together functioning life forms. Chase couldn't make himself say the word yes, couldn't tell Go that he was right. Not without giving himself away, and Banno still had too tight a rein on his tongue.

Go wasn't satisfied with Chase's vague answer, pressing for more specifics, and Chase couldn't tell him the truth. The moment passed, with Go understanding what Chase had done but not that it was Chase who had done it. Chase felt a wave of something unpleasant – annoyance, the occupant in his mind supplied absently – and the memory of his passenger drained away yet again.

"Your sister is very efficient," Chase heard himself say, and he'd forgotten something important. He didn't know what. He felt the vague flutterings of static at the edges of his mind, a sign that there was an error in his core programming, but he couldn't mention it and the static faded. Go was looking at him expectantly, and Chase cast around for what he'd been trying to say. Kiriko had told him to tell Go about the gathering, he thought. That must be it.

Something was still missing.

It wasn't enough. His personal freedom weighed against what he railed against his own hands performing was no choice at all, but he couldn't make the trade. He was trapped under his own skin, in his own lack of awareness until memory flooded back along with motion not his own, only to wax and wane when it was done with him.

There is no way out echoed across his mind as he stared down at Go curled against his chest, the second transformation already having measurable effects. The Kamen Riders had destroyed two of the Roidmudes he'd made, taking advantage of flaws Chase had built into them. Connections missed, pieces aligned ever so slightly off-kilter, a dozen tiny errors adding up to creations that weren't entirely up to par. The third Roidmude, though, would have Banno's entire will bent upon it.

**This wasn't part of the plan**, Banno snarled in the back of Chase's mind, but Chase fought back. He wouldn't leave Go alone, not until he knew the Driver hadn't damaged him irreparably already. The third Roidmude would wait, no matter how much Banno railed. Chase had this much control, holding onto it by the thinnest of margins until he couldn't lose himself in the distraction of creating a future he didn't know if he would even reach and the only thought he had left was I want to keep you safe. It battered against the rock of the third Roidmude, breaking and reforming in waves until Go shifted under Chase's hand and murmured his name.

It was with him, wrapping itself around his limbs more tightly than before, echoing under his skin with a voice that wasn't a voice reflecting that which should long have been gone, it in and of itself a distorted reflection of what it had once been, mirrored and mirrored again, with each iteration more misshapen than the last. It moved him with brutal efficiency nonetheless, rapid, quick, making the first and the second and teaching each one to ape his motions and continue to create an army of distractions while he built the death of his friends and teammates.

There were no gaps, no cracks, nothing he could leverage into a weakness, until it was nearly finished; an error in sensory calibration that would slow the Roidmude down just enough for the upgraded Mach to keep up with it. And when it killed Mach, it would pour itself out of Chase into the vessel he had created for it and he- he would be finished.

One last well of strength in the face of inevitable defeat, reserves Chase hadn't known he had, trying to keep the memory of the parasite infesting his Core and his mind in sharp relief instead of letting it sink into obscurity. All or nothing, Chase thought, and tried to ignore Banno's mocking laughter. It pulled him to move and speak and sometimes not say anything at all, tangling around his tongue when he tried to speak, and no one understood what he couldn't tell them.

Go was a warm weight against his side, breathing deep and even, and Chase surreptitiously redistributed his weight to settle Go more comfortably. Kiriko noticed anyway, rolling her eyes and smiling. Chase smoothed the hair out of Go's eyes, and Kiriko's face softened at the gesture. Chase almost didn't want the film to end, but all too soon the end credits were rolling and the lights were on and Go was sitting up, looking vaguely embarrassed.

Banno roiled against the back of Chase's tongue, pressing down into the leaden sensation in what passed for Chase's stomach until he thought something had to give. Words spilled out, not the words he'd been trying to say. "Your engagement in certain extracurricular activities has been draining your stamina," Chase said, deliberately looking at exactly where the Driver would have rested against Go's hips in a victorious moment of hard-won willpower and desperate hope for Go to understand.

Afterward, Chase wasn't sure how he'd managed to miss the mark so badly. Instead of alerting his friend – boyfriend-partner-lover – to the very real danger he was in, Chase had disclosed their physical relationship. Go hadn't precisely tried to keep it a secret, but the way he'd avoided mentioning it to anyone else hadn't gone unnoticed. Chase swallowed down the leaden taste of failure.

Listening to Shinnosuke verbally dance around the topic of Go's emotional wellbeing was a distraction, but Chase couldn't decide whether or not it was a welcome one. Shinnosuke's long and confusing speech ended abruptly with "And don't you forget it" as Go wrapped him in a hug for reasons unknown. Chase wasn't in the least surprised that neither Kiriko nor Shinnosuke had anticipated what Go had thought would be a revelation, nor did he find their reactions unexpected, but despite the damage Chase knew the Driver had done to Go, the other man looked lighter on his feet at the unalloyed acceptance from his family. Chase couldn't help the small curl of relief, nor the thought that he'd failed entirely.

Trying to tell Go what the Driver was doing changed in his mouth, the words coming out as something else entirely, and Chase gave up. Go must have noticed something, for he asked the one question Chase hadn't anticipated.

"Do you want this to keep going? Us?"

The words swept around him from behind, taking him unawares, and Chase stilled. He didn't trust himself to move or speak for a small eternity, but Go's breath only hitched twice before Chase could turn around and speak with utter and total honesty for the first time since waking in the Drive Pit. "I want you to be with me for as long as you can," he said, willing Go to see the implications of his words. You're dying, he couldn't say. The Driver is going to leach out your life in bits and pieces, and you'll welcome it, because you can't see it coming.

Once again, Chase flew wide of the mark, and he fled before his Core shook itself apart. Even running away, there was only one path he could take, and he knew Go was right behind him.

"Don't speak," he said, pulling Go inside as soon as Go turned the knob.

"I'm not going anywhere," Go said, and Chase buried the scream he couldn't utter. The words echoed, nearly drowning out the submerged framework Banno had grown deep in his mind, and Chase held onto them like a lifeline.

Tension, building around his Core, both driven and anchored by the promise Go was going to break, whether he wanted to or not – I'm not going anywhere – until Chase had almost nothing left to give, his final reserves already exhausted. He had nearly broken it, though, broken it along with him.

**Now! Strike now!**

Shackles, chains, freedom to move in any direction but not the one he really wanted – but his obscene creation burst into cleansing flame and Chase knew there was one thing he could keep safe. Keep safe from everything. Nothing. Nothing would.

I'm not going anywhere.

But he was already gone.

I'm not going anywhere.

Shijima Go is a liar, Chase knew suddenly, and the world around him splintered.

**Killhimkillhimkillhimbloodonthepavementkillhimdoitnow-**

Fade. Static. Protect. Protect. Threat. Threat assessment. Warning. His hand twitched to the side almost imperceptibly and Chase frowned. Protect. Keep safe. Safe. Safe. Closer, warm and pliant – why isn't he moving – still and safe no one would touch him safe safe protect warn safe I can't I can't something is wrong no valid input protect this voice is the sound of betrayal what are you doing don't not him not Shinnosu-shinno-shin—neutralize – familiar is poison is wrong is no protect safe keep safe make it stop make it stop

make it stop

Fire crawled along the edge of his senses, pain bringing cessation of thought, disrupting burning bringing everything crashing crashing fading into gray static

stay in the silence

safe as long as he stayed submerged keeping it in the depths with him where it couldn't control couldn't leach into thoughts tongue eyes hands safe in the nothing

stay down, proto-zero

Static washed over him.


	12. Go: Made It

Sound pressed against his ears, pulling Go out of the warm darkness, dragging him into - into what? He felt pressure against his shoulders and hips and heels, tugging against the inside of his arm, air moving across his face, and he had no idea where he was.

Something was missing. "Chase," Go said, lips and teeth and tongue uncoordinated. "Chase," he tried again, but the darkness dragged him back under.

Brightness flared at the center of his vision and he flinched away, the effort monumental and leaving him exhausted. Keeping his eyes open was a daunting and herculean task, thoughts slipping away from him before they had a chance to form.

"Go?" came a familiar voice, the relief that came with it so stark that it took what little strength Go had and poured it out into the ether.

"Chase," he managed, voice shaking.

"No," Kano said, turning to face him, one hand still on a vase of flowers right where Go could see them without moving. "Hold on, I'll tell someone you're awake."

"Where's Chase," Go tried to ask, but his eyelids closed without his permission and took any semblance of wakefulness away.

The third time was easier, the rusty feeling in his head less constricting, the weights pulling at his skin just a little lighter. The disorienting fog had nearly dissipated, but Go still didn't know where he had been or where he was now or why he felt apprehension curdling in the pit of his stomach. He would remember. He had to remember.

Wasn't - there was a Roidmude. Shin was fighting. Shin was fighting, and I helped.

Putting words to memory felt painfully wrong, as though liquid were running along channels left dry, but the more he tried, the easier it got. Memory after memory tumbled past, until he thought he knew where he had been. The last Roidmude - Go had woken up in a warehouse, worked his way free, and followed the sound and fury of Shin fighting off the last Roidmude. They'd tag-teamed it. They'd - had they defeated it?

Go frowned. It would be easier, he thought, to figure out if the Roidmude was dead if he could just look at it, but everything around him was pitch dark. There was no light at all. He tried to blink, and realized that his eyes were closed.

"Goddammit," he muttered, and opened them.

A white ceiling swam into view. Go frowned at it. He was absolutely certain he remembered being outside. For that matter, he was also certain he'd remembered seeing Chase, and Chase had been acting odd. He'd just stood there, instead of helping, and - the memory was hazy.

"Mr. Shijima?" came an unfamiliar voice, and it took Go several seconds to realize that it was talking to him.

Some agonizing hours later, Go found himself in possession of several unalterable facts. Fact: he and Shin had defeated the Roidmude. Fact: the Mach driver had been too much for Go to physically be able to handle, and he'd blacked out from the strain; he'd been in a hospital for days, apparently, recovering. Fact: Go wasn't entirely certain he was anywhere near recovered, which didn't matter, because Chase had completely snapped and no attempts had been made to repair him.

"You can't just leave," Shin said. Kiriko had already given up, glaring at him over her son's head as though that was going to make any difference.

Go kept pulling his shirt over his head, finally stymied by the line attached to his forearm. He blinked at it, followed it to the little pump next to the bed, grabbed it with the other hand and pulled it out. It bled, enough to stain his shirt, and he pressed his palm against it for a moment. "I can, and I will."

Pants, pants were next. He got his feet through the right holes, managed to stand long enough to settle them around his hips, and clung to the side of the bed for support.

"You can't even stand up straight," Shin said, which was exactly the wrong tack to take, and he knew it. It was as though he were encouraging Go to leave.

"Watch me," Go muttered. Everything he'd been wearing when he'd woken up was in a heap at the foot of the bed, and all he had left to do was put on his socks. "Chase -"

"Chase isn't in any danger," Shin said.

"You don't know that," Go said doggedly. Chase had been unresponsive since he'd been incapacitated, and neither Rinna nor Kyu had been able to make heads or tails of what was going on inside his head. Go wasn't entirely sure they'd actually tried.

"Professor Harley," Shin started, and those were words that mattered. Go sat down on the edge of the bed. "Is looking into it," Shin continued, with a barely noticeable pause.

"Aside from Professor Harley," Go said, "The foremost experts on Roidmude programming are Krim and me." It was a technically true statement, although Go's expertise was so far behind the other two as to be nearly laughable.

Shin's hesitation told Go exactly what Kiriko's verbal dancing around the subject had; Krim had refused to look into Chase's programming to see what had gone wrong. She'd tried to distract him with an explanation of how the Special Investigation Unit had located the Roidmude base, and that it looked as though no unknown individuals had made use of it. She hadn't come right out and said that Chase had been the one to build the Roidmudes and set them loose on the general populace for reasons unknown, but it wasn't difficult to read between the lines. Go was also familiar enough with his sister to see right through her distraction.

"If Chase was compromised by something external," Go said, "hooking Krim up to it might leave him vulnerable, too."

"That's what Harley said." Shin didn't have to sound surprised, Go thought resentfully. He knew what he was talking about.

"And?" Go prompted.

"And he can't come all the way to Japan to figure out what's going on."

Not the right words after all; Go levered himself off the bed again, ignoring the way his vision grayed out around the edges, and started for the door. "Then what you have is me."

"Rinna -" Shin started.

"Doesn't know as much about Chase's programming as I do, not any more. Neither does Kyu. You know they don't." One foot in front of the other, and he'd made it to the door. The hallway loomed outside, bright and shiny with clean tile. It seemed huge.

"Go," Kiriko said.

"It can't wait." Go leaned against the doorway. "It can't wait," he repeated. "What if whatever is wrong - what if it's getting worse, and we can't tell? I can't do this again, Kiriko." He clamped his mouth shut before he said too much. What if the only reason he looked at you at all was because something was wrong with him, continued the litany in his head, even as he kept the words off his tongue. What if you made it worse. What if he dies again, because of what you forced on him.

"You can't help him if you can't see straight," Kiriko said acidly.

She wasn't wrong, technically. Go was beginning to think standing in the doorway was a bad idea, but he didn't think he could make it down the hall, either. Shin pulled him back across the room before his knees buckled, depositing him on the bed he'd worked so hard to get away from.

"I can't help him at all if I sit here and do nothing," he snapped, and she gave him a hurt look. Regret wound its way through him and he raised shaking hands to cover his face. "I - I can't just do nothing," he said.

"You're not doing anything without supervision," Kiriko said, and it sounded like a compromise.

Signing himself out of the hospital against medical advice felt, somehow, like one of the most reckless things Go had ever done, even if he could objectively point to multiple decisions he'd made that had had a much higher risk and a much greater chance of failure. It might have been Kiriko behind him, face taut with worry as she tried to juggle an unhappy Eiji and keep an eye on her wayward little brother.

Sheer force of will kept Go awake through the soporific drone of Tridoron's engine across the city streets, and the Drive Pit looming up outside the windshield seemed wavery and oddly unreal until they passed through the entrance and came to a halt. Go leaned on the side of the car for a moment after climbing out, seeing what he knew to be Chase's prone form out of the corner of his eyes and not quite ready to face it head on. He pushed himself away from Tridoron before Shin could walk around the car and offer either help or advice.

Chase might have looked asleep, if one didn't look too closely; Go couldn't shake the feeling that he looked like a wax doll, like something that had never been alive. He was still wearing clothes Kiriko had picked out, jeans and long-sleeved button-up shirt, sneakers, even the Driver slung low around his waist, all of it covered in dust and smudged. A streak of soot ran along one cheekbone, and Go reached out without thinking to brush it away.

Part of him had irrationally, madly hoped that his touch would precipitate some sort of miracle, that Chase would open his eyes and everything would be all right. Instead, Chase's skin was cool to the touch, and Go flinched away.

"How did you access his Core?" he asked, because Chase still looked human.

"Here." Go didn't know if Rinna had been there when he'd walked in, or if she'd just appeared while he wasn't paying attention, but she showed him how to integrate Chase into the Drive Pit's monitoring systems. "Before you look at it," she said, eyes warm with sympathy. "It's a mess in there. Professor Harley left some notes, but there was only so much he could do remotely."

Going over the set of notes and Chase's base code was reminiscent of the months Go had spent trying to put him together in the first place, except worse. Chase was right here, silent in a way that was both deeply unsettling and utterly in character, and Go couldn't reach him. He spoke to Chase while he worked on the off chance that Chase could hear him, sleeping only when he had to.

The core programming was in shambles; Go knew what it was supposed to look like, but furthermore, he could see traces of something else hidden in Chase's base code. There had been something he'd missed. This was my fault. If he hadn't been convinced before, he was now. He had a copy of the original code he'd used, and by comparing it to the mess it had become, he could see exactly what he'd missed and how it had hidden itself in plain sight.

"You're not responsible for this," Rinna told him, three days into the project.

"If I hadn't missed it to begin with, this wouldn't have happened." Go thought he'd cleaned out the infection, but he was far from finished.

"You're not the one -" Rinna started.

"No," Go interrupted. "It was just Banno. Just my father, buried deep in Hypnos, worming his way into the code that Hypnos took from my memoryto rebuild Chase, hiding in Chase's subconscious where I failed to see that there was something in there that didn't belong!" He was shouting by the end, and Rinna had gone from sympathetic to startled to angry.

"You didn't see it. I didn't see it. Kyu didn't see it," she snapped. "That doesn't make it anyone's fault."

"He was my father," Go said, bitterly. "That makes it my responsibility."

Rinna didn't have an answer to that.

Shin tried, too, five days after Go had staggered into the Drive Pit mostly under his own power and started a task that didn't look like it had any possibility of completion. He didn't even have to speak.

"I already know," Go said. "Chase rebuilt the Roidmudes. Banno left a copy of himself in Hypnos, like a virus, and it infected Chase when Hypnos wrote his code. I don't know how much Chase knew about what he was doing, but he must have worked on them while I was asleep. Or while I thought he was working. I don't know."

"Not that," Shin said, and right, Go had had that conversation with Shin shortly after his confrontation with Rinna. "I wanted to see how you were."

"I got my best friend - my boyfriend - braindead. I'm doing great." Go turned back to the screen; he thought he had untangled some of the twisted skeins of nonsense, and if he was right, it should start to fall into place. He was letting the Drive Pit systems - a copy of the software, in a closed loop that went no farther than the machines go was using and Chase himself, just in case he'd missed Banno again somehow - work in the background, compiling the pieces that had been left into the framework Go had recreated.

"You don't have to…" Shin's voice trailed off, and Go glanced over at him.

"What else am I supposed to do?" he asked, the words coming hard and barely loud enough to hear.

"He wouldn't want you to - to drive yourself into the ground," Shin said, gently.

Given that Chase had said almost exactly that when Go had revived him the first time, Go couldn't argue. "I won't," he said instead. "I know what I'm doing, this time."

Shin didn't look convinced, but he left Go alone, or as alone as he ever did; someone was always in the Drive Pit with him, making sure he ate at least at irregular intervals and reminding him that the outside world still existed. It had been less than a week, but Go felt as though he'd been in the round white room forever.

Six days saw Go almost sure he'd repaired Chase's code, absolutely sure he'd rooted out every trace of Banno, and ready try to bring Chase back. Again. Kyu had been in the room while Go was arranging and rearranging the connectors, uploading the restored code, and preparing for the final run, but Go was alone when he took a deep breath and prepared to hit the metaphorical button.

A moment of doubt rose up - should I have used the original framework? - but Go had avoided putting Chase into the metal frame he and Rinna had used months ago to revive Chase in the first place out of a sense of superstition. Or paranoia. As if, he shied away from thinking, if he put Chase in that frame, he was acknowledging that the Chase he'd spent the last few months with was gone forever.

"Ready," he said. "Set." He couldn't say the final word, and hitting the button seemed anticlimactic. "Come on, Chase."

Instead of Chase opening his eyes, the system beeped in a rapid series, and the display screen flashed the word error. Go frowned at it. There were no errors. He'd tested the code before uploading it. He tried running it again, with the same result.

"Chase, what the hell," he said, frustrated and suddenly angry at Chase for stubbornly refusing to cooperate. He knew it wasn't rational, knew that it was a ridiculous reaction, and he couldn't help it. Go picked up the nearest item - a wireless mouse, sitting innocently on the desk - and flung it toward the wall. It cracked and fell to pieces, scattering across the floor, and Kyu peered around the doorway.

"Please don't throw things at me," he said.

"That wasn't - I didn't - I'm sorry." Go turned away, trying and failing to get himself under control. "I just. Um."

Kyu edged into the room, looking less apprehensive than he had in days. Go had no idea why. "Maybe you should step back for a few minutes," he said.

"I have to - I can't stop." If he stopped, he would be letting Chase down. He would have let his best friend die, again, because he couldn't get his act together.

"Look," Kyu said, and squared his shoulders. "Whatever you were - were doing with Chase before, no one could say you aren't working as hard as you can to help him now."

"But if I stop," Go said.

"Perspective." Kyu had crossed the room while Go wasn't looking at him, and he put his hands on Go's shoulders and steered him toward the door. "Distance gives you perspective."

"I don't need distance, I need to know why this isn't working." Go wasn't about to move, and Kyu wasn't strong enough to make him.

"Okay," Kyu said. "Show me what you've been doing. Take me through it, line by line."

It didn't help; Kyu couldn't find the problem, either. As far as Go could tell, Chase should be awake and functioning and back to the way he'd been before, and yet, he had a lifeless doll instead of a person.

Eight days after Go had walked into the Drive Pit, he woke up to find Shin standing over him, sympathetic in a way Go hated to see. He waited to speak until Go peeled himself off the desk, coughing to try and clear the dust out of his lungs, and then leaned against it in a mockery of a casual position.

"Go," he started, and then hesitated. "We need to close the Drive Pit down again."

"But he's not ready," Go said.

Shin hesitated again. "It might be time to let this go," he said.

"Him," Go corrected, and when Shin just looked at him blankly, he glared. "Let him go. Chase might not be human, but he's still a person, and you're asking me to let him die."

"I'm not asking you to let him die," Shin said. "I'm asking you to recognize that he's already gone."

It felt like a knife to the chest, and the only word that Go could think of was betrayal. Shin was stabbing him in the back, him and Chase both, and he wasn't going to stand for it. "You can't," he said. "He's not gone. Just. I just need to figure out how to bring him back."

"The equipment in the Drive Pit," Shin said, and paused, as if weighing his words. "It's too sensitive, to take the chance of something like this happening again. If this falls into the wrong hands -"

"The answer isn't to just lock it away," Go said. "We tried that. It didn't work."

"It's not - we're heavily restricting access," Shin said, and then Go knew what was really going on. They wanted him out, wanted him gone, they knew that he was the one who was responsible for the entire mess. It was almost a kindness, not acknowledging his liability, and instead letting his guilt weigh him down. Almost a kindness, except that they were letting him punish himself.

"Let me at least say goodbye," he said. "Give me until tomorrow."

"I'm staying down here with you, then," Shin said, one hand tapping on his phone. "Until tomorrow morning."

Go almost could have laughed; Shin clearly thought he was going to do something stupid. He suppressed the sound, and went back to Chase, disconnecting him from the system. By the time he'd coiled up the wires, he'd all but forgotten that Shin was still there.

Chase's Signal Bike had been retrieved along with the Ride Chaser and Chase himself, and Go folded Chase's hand around it. It stayed closed, fingers gripping the Signal Bike, and Go had an irrational moment of hope. For all that he looked like a wax doll, Chase's body had been completely limp. Heart pounding in his throat, Go made himself look upwards, from Chase's hand up toward his face. Disappointment ate into the back of his tongue like acid at the sight of Chase's eyes still closed, still unaware and unresponsive.

There was nothing left to do, nothing but talk, and he couldn't even do that. The steady stream of words that had flowed from him for days had dried, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth. Go pulled a stool next to the table and sat on it, resting his head on Chase's shoulder. "It's not fair that you left, after I worked so hard to bring you back," he said.

The Signal Bike pressed against Go's palm, reminding him that it was there, and it felt simultaneously out of place and achingly familiar. Go worked it out of Chase's grip, turning just enough to be able to see the Mach Driver settled over Chase's hips. Idly, he slid the Signal Bike into it.

"Last time," he said, and pulled the switch.

Go didn't expect it to work.

The wash of energy from the Driver fading, Chaser giving way to Mashin Chaser only for the Roidmude's outlines to slip into Chase's familiar features with his eyes open and clear was the last thing Go was sure he remembered before waking up in a hospital for the second time in as many weeks. It had taken him three days to escape, with full authorization of his health care team, and in all that time, he hadn't seen Chase once. No one would tell him where Chase was, either, and Go was starting to doubt what he thought he had seen. He'd tried texting Chase, even, but he hadn't gotten an answer, and every time he sent a new message only to see that it hadn't been opened was like another sharp object lodged in his chest.

Kiriko wouldn't let him dwell on it, instead redirecting his attention to preparing him to stay with her for the remainder of his recovery. Go put his foot down at the refusal to let him go home, which resulted in apparent rotating shifts to babysit him. He bore it with good grace for the first half hour, and then it was clear that Kiriko was both overprotective and far too highly motivated. His attempts to annoy his older sister into leaving met with a surprising amount of resistance.

"Why," he said, for at least the twelfth time in as many minutes, just to see if Kiriko would crack this time.

"Do you want a list?" she asked. "I have a list. It starts with the word arrhythmia, goes past electrolyte imbalances and an upper respiratory – why are you asking if you're not going to listen to the answer?"

"That was last time," Go said. He couldn't quite argue that he felt fine, but he didn't think he needed to be supervised; he just needed sleep. Unfortunately for his sanity, Kiriko was both more persuasive and more terrifying than he was.

"Before you spent over a week attempting death by self-neglect, after which you tried to electrocute yourself on someone else's Driver." If looks could kill, Kiriko's death glare would have flayed him alive. "You're not going anywhere until I know everything is fine."

"But I'm bored." Kiriko had installed a low couch in his living room, taking up far too much space behind the kotatsu, as if in anticipation of Go refusing to stay in the bedroom to rest. He was sitting on it now, feet curled underneath him and wrapped in a blanket despite the electric heater keeping the room more than warm enough. The persistent chills were a side effect of something that was a result of something else, none of which Go had paid attention to; all he knew was that he felt terrible and had an offensively cute little box labeled with days and times for him to take pills he didn't think he needed.

"Should have thought of that before you pulled that little stunt." Kiriko could somehow manage to make what should have been a comfortable seat on the other end of the couch look like a professional presentation, and she was pulling out all the stops now.

Go couldn't blame his sister for being worried. He could blame her for taking out her ire on what she had decided was the source of her problems. "Where's –" he started, intending to ask about Shin, so he could spread around some of the misery and boredom before wondering where Chase was drove him stark raving mad. The question died in his throat as he heard the unmistakable sound of the front door opening. Barely-audible footsteps made their way down the hall slowly enough that Go wondered if Kiriko had been serious about having Shin keep an eye on him after all before the living room door opened, and Chase stepped through it.

"Go," Chase said. "Kiriko."

Go closed his mouth with a snap. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Kiriko looked just as surprised as he felt, but he didn't have enough attention to parse the implications. "Chase," he said, which took up every bit of focus he had.

Go had all but come to the conclusion that he'd hallucinated Chase waking up, that Shin had sealed Chase into the Drive Pit after Go had failed him yet again. By the time he walked through his front door – more winded by the three flights of stairs than he cared to admit – to find his apartment empty, he'd started trying to resign himself to the reality that Chase was really and truly gone. It had hurt, far more than he'd wanted to share with anyone else, even if the quiet sympathy in Kiriko's eyes told him that she knew exactly what he wasn't saying. I can't let him go warred with What else can I do until Go was dizzy and sick with it, and maybe Kiriko had had a point about not leaving him alone after all.

Kiriko looked between the two of them. "Did Shinnosuke talk to you?" she asked, pulling Go out of his thoughts.

"Yes," Chase said, and that was apparently enough for Kiriko. With a stern look at Go, she left the room, closing the door behind her. The front door opened and closed a few minutes later, and Go let out the breath he'd been holding.

"You were damaged," Chase said. He stood uncertainly by the door, as though he couldn't make up his mind whether or not to enter the room. Ridiculous, since he was already standing in it.

Go shrugged in answer to his question, response slow and late enough that Chase had started to look worried. "Just a little damaged," he said, downplaying the severity of his condition even though the Mach Driver had been sabotaged – by Chase, was the only reasonable explanation, even if no one had said it in so many words – in such a way that he had sustained cumulative internal injuries. Most of it would heal fairly quickly; the rest wouldn't really affect him one way or another and would also probably heal, over time. "It's really not that bad." Trying to sit up straight in an attempt to look healthier pulled on something and left him breathless. "Are you okay?" he finally managed. "No one would tell me anything about you at all. I thought – I thought you were still gone."

"I am in working order," Chase said, which wasn't quite an answer. "Optimal working order," Chase amended, which was a little better, but he still hadn't moved from his position by the door. "Shinnosuke has been supervising a thorough evaluation of my core programming."

Knowing what Chase had been doing eased the sting of his lack of communication, although Go would have been happier if someone had simply told him where Chase was instead of staying silent on the subject. He didn't need to be protected; if Kiriko and Shin thought they could just not tell him that he'd managed to revive Chase after all on the off chance that Chase was still compromised, Go had some words for both of them. Explaining as much to Chase now was a moot point, though, not with Chase staring at him as though trying to decipher a particularly difficult puzzle. "You're sure you're okay," he said instead.

"Yes," Chase said. He hesitated again. "I think," he said, and then fell maddeningly silent.

"You don't have to stay all the way over there," Go said, and counted it as a minor miracle that Chase actually sat next to him when he beckoned. Chase took one of his hands, meshing their fingers together as though Go might break if he touched him too roughly.

"I think I am experiencing distress," Chase said, and Go looked up from their linked hands in confusion. "Because you're hurt. Because I hurt you. Because you didn't take care of yourself." Chase shook his head. "I don't understand."

"You – you feel?" Go asked, sitting straight up. It didn't hurt, this time, not in the face of this new revelation; Chase had shown bits and pieces of human emotion, but nothing full-fledged, and the thought that the alterations to his programming that Go hadn't been able to avoid might be allowing him a closer approximation of humanity was exhilarating.

"I'm not sure. It isn't entirely pleasant." Chase almost frowned, but he didn't let go of Go's hand.

"None of it was your fault," Go said, trying to reassure him. He didn't want Chase's first feelings to be negative. "I was the one who didn't find the – the virus in your system. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine."

"No," Chase said, after a moment, and did not elaborate further.

"If I'd found it in the first place," Go said, when it was clear that Chase wasn't going to explain.

"You are not at fault for not finding a hidden trap, and you deny my fault for allowing myself to be used," Chase said, and glared when Go opened his mouth to protest. "The only one at fault is the person who created the trap."

"You're very talkative today," Go said finally. The conversation wasn't going the way he'd envisioned it at all. Chase wasn't accepting his apologies – he wasn't even giving Go the chance to make them, taking away the blame with reason and logic. He wasn't reacting positively to Go having resurrected him for a second time, either, although Go hadn't really expected that, after the way the first time had gone.

Chase tilted his head to the side and simply looked at him.

"Now you're doing that on purpose." Go wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a hint of a smile, and it gave him the courage to finally ask. "Chase, did you – were you – was…" The words were harder to get out than he'd thought, and Chase's nearly blank gaze wasn't helping. "You and me," Go finally got out. "Are – do you still want… want us?"

Chase blinked twice, slowly. "I believe the correct phrase is Are you breaking up with me," he said.

"What? No! I'm – I was – I wanted to give you a way out, if you'd been coerced into doing something you didn't want to do because of whatever was in your head!"

Chase stared at him for so long that Go could almost hear six different responses, none of which sounded like Chase in the slightest, all of which seemed equally likely, and none of which were anything he wanted to hear. "I still have a lot to learn," he said eventually, which was not on Go's list of possible answers.

"I understand," Go said. He couldn't look Chase in the eye, but he couldn't bring himself to pull his hand away either. He'd known this was coming. He'd known that Chase would move on.

"I still want you to be the one to show me," Chase said. "What it means to be human."

The words took a moment to settle, Go opening his mouth to tell Chase that it was all right and that he understood even if it ripped him to shreds inside before the meaning sank in, and he couldn't speak at all.

"Go?" Chase said again, and now he actually looked worried.

"Are you sure?" Go finally got words out, not the ones he'd wanted to say, but better than clinging mutely to Chase with a death grip.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Chase looked from their still-linked hands to Go's face. "You're my best friend. I think I might be in love with you."

"Because I just want you to be okay, and happy, and I don't want you to do anything you don't want to, and…" He couldn't stop talking. He couldn't stop his traitorous tongue from trying to convince Chase that he didn't want exactly what Chase was trying to tell him that he did want, and now even his thoughts were running away from him in the face of Chase saying exactly what Go had wanted to hear since he'd cost Chase his life.

The not-quite-panicked babble was silenced by Chase leaning forward to kiss Go softly on the mouth, and then sitting back with an insufferably smug expression as Go fell entirely silent. "I'm sure," he said.

"That was cheating," Go muttered, but at least his heart felt lighter and less like it was about to leap out of his chest.

"Tactics," Chase countered.

"Who taught you that all is fair in love and war?" Go demanded, and when Chase just gave him a confused look, he flopped back onto the couch and groaned. "Definitely cheating," he said. "Please never stop using that tactic, though."

"As you wish," Chase said, and now Go was sure Chase was teasing him somehow. He shifted until he could lean comfortably against Chase's shoulder, keeping their hands loosely entwined. "I'm not going anywhere," Chase said softly, an echo of the promise Go had nearly broken.

The breath hitched in Go's throat at the thought of how close he'd come to losing Chase, and he couldn't stop himself from squeezing Chase's hand until it hurt. "Welcome back," he said, voice suddenly hoarse.

There was a long pause, and Chase said the words Go had thought he'd never hear from him again. "I'm home."

One Week Later  
"This is not a relapse." Go glared at Chase. "I haven't touched the damn thing, and you know it."

Chase looked at him, inexplicably unruffled, and it was irritating. Go wanted to prod at him, get under his skin, get some kind of reaction other than the stoic calm that Chase still projected incessantly despite the unpredictability of his new emotions. "I can list symptoms for comparison, if you wish."

"Oh, fuck off," Go hissed, and the door opened on what Go was hoping would have been a full-blown argument before it was derailed by an actual medical professional with a presumably expert opinion on why he suddenly couldn't climb three flights of stairs without stopping at every landing to breathe.

"This is not a repeat of your earlier condition, Mr. Shijima."

Go pointed a victorious finger at Chase. "I told you."

It was a further victory when Chase actually looked annoyed. He turned away from Go, smoothing his face into a pleasant expression, asking for clarification, and the sense of having won something drained away. Go rubbed his forehead. His current situation wasn't Chase's fault; he'd said it over, and over, and over. He was the one to blame for what Chase had done to the Driver, if there was blame to be shared apart from his father, and taking out his frustration on Chase wouldn't do either of them any good.

"Mr. Shijima?" he heard, and looked up.

"I'm listening," he said, and reached for Chase's hand. Chase had opted to stand next to him, while he waited on the stupid paper-covered table, and he gripped Go willingly now. Forgiveness, in the face of Go's uncalled-for hostility, and Go didn't deserve that kind of forbearance.

The rest of the appointment didn't take long; he'd had a reaction to the antibiotics that were supposed to clear up the respiratory infection he'd picked up as a consequence of Chase's meddling with the Driver, which meant more ridiculous details to keep track of, and Go desperately wanted to throw a tantrum, but he was too exhausted. You don't need a transfusion to replace your red blood cells had been a sentence that was supposed to be encouraging, but all Go had wanted to do was throw a chair into the nearest wall.

"Are you upset with me?" Chase asked in a low voice on the drive home, after Go had sullenly buckled himself into the passenger seat of Kiriko's car. The Ride Macher, which he'd refused to put back into the Drive Pit, was sitting unused in the parking lot below the apartment building until Go felt better.

"What? No." He wasn't, not really. Go knew it wasn't Chase's fault, and Chase didn't deserve to have to deal with Go on top of building a life. "You don't need this," he muttered.

"Need what?" Chase said, and Go didn't know if he'd spoken louder than intended or if Chase had been straining to hear whatever he'd said.

"To put up with all of my shit," he said more loudly, staring out the window.

"It is distressing," Chase said, "that you have attempted to convince me multiple times that I should want nothing to do with you."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't," Go snapped without thinking.

Chase didn't answer, and Go didn't look at him; the silence stretched out through the rest of the drive, and when Chase reached the parking lot, he left the car running.

"What are you doing?" Go asked, the edge in his voice still there.

"Returning your sister's car," Chase said, his tone brittle. It might not have been noticeable to most of the people Chase knew, but Go could tell.

"Right." Go climbed out of the car and watched Chase drive away, the three flights of stairs between him and the door an absurdly daunting task, and he sat down heavily on the bottom step of the first flight. "What are you even doing," he asked himself. He was just sick of it, sick of feeling tired, sick of not being able to do anything he enjoyed, sick of not being able to work. Chase wasn't earning enough to pay the rent, Go was sure of it, and that was just something else to worry about.

"Go," he heard, and looked up to see the light coming from a different direction entirely, a single ray of late afternoon sun slipping through the buildings to fall across Chase.

"Hey." He waved with one hand, trying to pretend he'd been sitting on the stairs the entire time Chase had been gone on purpose. "How was the drive?"

"Your sister is very wise," Chase said, instead of answering, and pulled Go to his feet.

"What? What are you – hey!" Chase had started up the stairs without him. Go followed, feeling less drained, and made it to their floor with only a single break. "What are you talking about?" he said, when he finally made it into the door and worked his shoes off. He left them neatly off to the side, before Chase could rearrange them.

"She says I should pay no attention to your whining," Chase said, mimicking Kiriko's inflections perfectly.

"I don't whine," Go said indignantly. Chase just looked at him. "Whatever."

"She also wants to talk to you." Chase handed him his phone, which Go had somehow lost track of and failed to notice.

"Of course she does." The balcony was a good place to talk, Go thought, and it was almost warm enough in late March to not be miserable standing outside.

What Kiriko wanted definitely qualified as talking to Go, with almost no listening; it would have been irritating, but Go was somehow obscurely comforted by his sister telling him that he was an idiot. It was the natural state of the universe, even if the particulars of this conversation were that – as the person in the relationship with experience with both emotions and interacting with others, as opposed to the Roidmude just figuring out how human emotion worked – Go was going to have to be the one who took the high ground of maturity, and that was antithetical to how he'd interacted with everyone, ever. It was worth the work he would put into it, though.

Chase was frowning at an open book on the kotatsu when Go went back inside, sliding the door firmly closed, and Go sat on the floor next to him. Chase glanced at the low sofa, which Go was beginning to hate with a passion, and then gave Go an uncertain look. "I'm sorry," Go said. "I feel shitty, and it's not your fault, and I shouldn't yell at you for it."

"Is that part of being human?" Chase asked.

"Fighting? Sure. Arguing is part of being around people." Go folded his arms on the kotatsu and propped his chin on them. "No one who spends any time around anyone escapes without fighting once in a while. You just have to, um." He wiggled one hand in an attempted handwave that went precisely nowhere. "It's how you work out your problems that makes things work or not."

"I don't like the arguing part," Chase said, and something about his turn of phrase struck Go as almost funny.

"Yeah, neither do I." Go smiled, but it felt wrong. "Doesn't mean I don't want you around. Doesn't mean I don't love you." Chase's hand rested on his shoulder, hesitantly at first and then more firmly when Go leaned into the touch. Go found himself yawning. "How the fuck can I be tired," he said, "when all I did all day was nothing."

"I want you to be with me as long as you can," Chase said suddenly, and the echo of the words that Chase had tried to use to warn him suddenly struck Go hard, but Chase was still talking. "I will learn how to work things out."

"It's not all on you," Go said, reaching up to cover Chase's hand with his. "Takes both of us to make it work."

One Month Later  
"This is the place?" Go kicked idly at the wall, skipping backwards when it cracked under his feet.

Shinnosuke nodded, apparently possessing infinite patience to answer people asking rhetorical questions. "The city's kept it blocked off until we can evaluate it."

Potential traps, Go heard, and wondered for a moment why Chase wasn't part of the environmental threat assessment. There was always the slight possibility that he'd missed something, or that Professor Harley had, or that Rinna and Kyu had, and while potential triggers couldn't be predicted, the place where Chase had done most of the work under Banno's direction was the most likely to contain a trap specifically directed at him. "Looks okay from here," he said, and grinned at Shinnosuke's exasperated expression.

The warehouse was relatively small, odds and ends tucked into strange corners and nothing quite where Go would have expected to find it. He wore the Mach Driver, ready in case of unexpected occurrences, but for the first time, Go felt almost apprehensive about it. He didn't want to use it, even if it had been thoroughly inspected and the safeguards reinstalled.

"You don't have to do this," Shin said, and Go rolled his eyes while Shin wasn't looking.

"You were specifically waiting for me to pass my physical," he said. "Don't lie."

Shin stared at him, affronted. "That wasn't the only consideration."

"Please," Go said. "We both know you wanted me here because I'm excellent at blowing things up." He grinned, trying to project bravado he didn't really feel, and some of it leaked into truth. He felt better about the Driver, about the warehouse, about the possibility of Chase having built a Roidmude that hadn't been one of the ones they'd defeated already.

Shin muttered something inaudible.

"I'm sorry," Go said, "I couldn't hear that over the sound of how awesome I am."

"You take the south end," Shin said, with the air of someone repeating himself, although Go knew perfectly well he'd said something entirely different.

"Yes, sir." Go fired off a deliberately sloppy salute, and jogged southward. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shin's mouth twist up into a half-smile shot through with exasperation. "You missed me!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Don't pretend you didn't!"

"You'd have to go somewhere for me to miss you," Shin yelled back.

"And yet," Go called. The first sweep of the warehouse hadn't turned up anything, but Go was of the opinion that they should just burn it down and start over. The city felt that controlled arson was a last resort. Go had wondered if he should set fire to it anyway, but Chase had given him an offended look when Go had started researching how likely it would be for unintended buildings to catch fire and Go knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Chase would either try to stop him, or – worse – send Shin to stop him. "Maybe if I claim it's an accident," he said, and noticed a door both he and Shin had missed the first time around.

"Hey," he shouted over his shoulder, the word getting lost in a fit of coughing as dust hit the back of his throat. Without intending do, his hand grazed the door, and it slid willingly open.

The space inside was small, but lights flickered on. Go caught his breath at the sight of the workbench – identical to the three they'd identified in the main warehouse, where both the original Roidmude hybrids and the shock troop copies had been constructed – with a figure lying on top of it. The body was perhaps three quarters complete, missing bits and pieces and one leg from the knee down, but the head and skull looked done. Go hesitated in the doorway, hand hovering over the Mach Driver, but the figure didn't stir.

"I found something!" he called, the words coming out on the second attempt, and Shin was looking over his shoulder in a matter of seconds.

"Banno?" Shin said. The Roidmude body on the slab was tall, as most Roidmudes were, and closer to human than any uncopied Roidmude Go had ever seen. He could tell that it would have been both strong and quick, and he felt a momentary wave of gratitude that Banno hadn't been copied into it.

"New body, I guess," Go said. Something looked slightly off about it, and Go crossed the room.

"Hey," Shin said, catching Go by the elbow. Go shook him off.

"I think I see something," he said. Most of the connections weren't completed, the Roidmude not in anything resembling a functional state, but when Go opened its head and chest, he could see that it never would have worked. "Look."

Shin had no idea what he was looking at, but he got it when Go explained that the Roidmude had been – for lack of a better phrase – incorrectly assembled. "So Chase was just, what, making gibberish?" he said.

"That's a good way to put it." Go poked at the inside of the Roidmude-shaped doll. "Even while Banno was possessing him, he was still putting up a hell of a fight."

"Of course he was," Shin said, as though there had ever been any question, and a knot of tension Go hadn't known was still there melted away. He trusted Chase, both implicitly and explicitly, but it had been hard to look at him, sometimes, over the past month.

"I owe him an apology," Go said, because Shin was looking at him expectantly.

"Go," he said, the tone of his voice too complex for Go to parse, and Go was saved from answering by Shin's phone ringing.

"Well, I'm not going to tell him," Go said to Shin's back, because it would just cause unnecessary hurt and suffering. Chase didn't need to know Go had apparently still been holding onto some lingering feelings of betrayal, or at least not right now. Maybe that would be a lesson for some time in the future, when Chase had learned more about being a person instead of just a reaper or a Kamen Rider.

As if on cue, Go's phone chimed with a message. Chase had sent a picture of a classroom, eerie mannequin at the front, and that was the other reason Chase wasn't down here in the warehouse with Go and Shin; he was starting his coursework.

First day of class! Go texted. Don't kill anyone accidentally.

Would on purpose be acceptable came back almost immediately, and Go laughed out loud before sending a negative reply.

The warehouse held no further surprises, no traps that Go could identify, and he felt lighter when he left.

Six Months Later  
"Don't be ridiculous." Go perched on top of the couch; he hadn't gotten around to getting rid of it, even though it had been a while since he'd gotten a mostly clean bill of health. He didn't quite have his stamina back, but he was working on it. The slow lightening of the summer heat mirrored the loosening of the grip of persistent lethargy around his limbs, for which Go was profoundly grateful. Chase, for his part, had taken to his coursework with far too much enthusiasm and apparently thought Go made for an excellent case study. Or maybe it was just that Go was easily accessible.

"I am less skilled than my classmates," Chase said. "I need to practice."

"You stop pointing that thing at me right now." Chase was between him and the door, but Go thought maybe he could make it to the balcony. The next building over was less than a meter away, and if he couldn't make the roof, he could always aim for one of their second floor windows.

"Go," Chase said, and if Go hadn't known better, he would have said Chase was whining. "A 22-gauge needle is objectively narrow. It will cause you no pain."

"I told you last time, I am not a guinea pig for you to practice sticking things into," Go said. He'd already suffered through non-invasive assessment tests, although he was fairly sure his shirt didn't need to come off for Chase to listen to his lungs and heart, and if Chase was doing to potential patients what he'd done to Go after putting down the stethoscope, Go was going to have to dramatically re-evaluate his opinion on Chase's choice of profession.

The corners of Chase's mouth turned down in disappointment, and Go hated that look on him. The time he'd spent being pieced back together after the Mach Driver had nearly torn him apart had led him to hate needles more, though, and he cast about for a different solution.

"Did you try asking Shin?" Go said desperately, not that he thought Shin would be cooperative. "Or Kyu? Rinna?"

Chase brightened almost imperceptibly, and Go apologized silently in his head to their mutual friends and family for the horror he had just unleashed on all of them. "I have not," he said, but he put the needle away, still unopened. Go eyed the bag now lying at Chase's feet with apprehension, not trusting that Chase wasn't going to pull something else out of it for practice. To his credit, Go had to admit, Chase didn't ask to practice the same procedure twice. It was just that he kept finding new ones.

The bag stayed on the floor, though, and Chase dropped gracefully onto the sofa next to Go's perch. Go slid down the back of it until he was leaning on Chase instead of the wall. "I like how much you like your classes," he said into Chase's shirt.

"Humans are more complex than I was led to believe," Chase said. "It's fascinating."

"Roidmudes aren't exactly simple," Go pointed out.

"It is a different type of complexity," Chase said. "There is more predictability."

"Uh huh." Chase's arm settled around his shoulders, and Go couldn't stop the contented little sigh that escaped him. "Are you happy?" he asked suddenly, the words tumbling out before he could think too much about them and convince himself that they didn't need to be said. The emotion Chase had thought he'd felt the first night he'd come back hadn't been consistent, had come and gone unpredictably for a while before stabilizing into what Go felt was a low-key approximation of a human heart.

Chase was silent for a long moment, but it was the type of quiet that meant he was giving whatever Go had asked his full concentration and consideration. "I don't know what it means to be happy," Chase said slowly. "If what I think I feel is – human." He paused again, and Go looked up at his face. Chase wore the expression that meant he was searching for the right words, and Go waited patiently for him to find them. "If knowing that I will contribute something of value to humans, that I have a family, the – the warmth that is there when I am with you, if that is happiness, then yes." Chase looked at him with an expression Go couldn't quite read. "I think that I am happy."

Go wrapped his arm around Chase's chest. "That's good," he said. "I want you to be happy."

"What about you?" Chase asked, regarding him steadily.

Go thought he'd learned a lot about himself, throughout the near idleness of recovery and the time he'd spent trying to piece together something out of the work that had been interrupted by more important things, but what he really knew was that somewhere along the way he'd stopped feeling like he had something to prove. "I think I am," he said, and he meant it. Even if he and Chase eventually went their separate ways, Go would be all right. "I'm happy," he repeated, with a sense of wonder at the truth to the words.

"Good," Chase said seriously, and Go couldn't stifle the laugh. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No," Go reassured him. "You said something right."

Chase gave him an extremely dubious look that Go pretended not to see, settling himself around his partner.

"Something exactly right," he repeated.

"Are you asking because it was today?" Chase asked, almost too quietly to hear, and the date clicked into place.

"You died today," Go said, feeling his heart contract painfully and skip a beat, and he couldn't stop himself from holding onto Chase more tightly. "It was today, three years ago."

"You weren't responsible for my death," Chase said, sounding as though he were trying the words on for size, as though he weren't quite sure they were relevant to the topic at hand, but of course it had been Go's fault that Chase had died.

"If –" Go started, but there might have been the possibility that Chase wasn't wrong. "Maybe," he said instead, and the word didn't sound like a lie. The road he'd started down all those years ago, when he'd run away overseas, had taken him to places he couldn't have imagined in his wildest adolescent dreams, and even with the regrets he would never quite manage to lay to rest, Go wouldn't have traded it for anything anyone could give him. "When Hypnos was in my subconscious," he said, remembering what he hadn't wanted to say to the shadow of Chase in his dreams.

"Banno wasn't your fault either," Chase said, almost sharply.

"That's not what I meant," Go retorted, poking Chase hard in the ribs, but he didn't sit up. "You were in my dream."

"You told me," Chase said, and moved Go's offending hand away.

"I wanted to tell you something else." He'd been so happy to see Chase, even if it hadn't been the real Chase. The figment of his imagination had represented what he'd wanted most in that moment, and in the months since then, nothing had changed. "I wanted to tell you," Go said into the expectant silence, "that you're the most important person to me."

"But I already know that," Chase returned, sounding puzzled.

"Yeah, well, I wanted to say it out loud." Go shifted until he could see Chase's expression clearly. "I want it to be absolutely clear that I love you."

"Go," Chase said, turning to face him with an almost dour expression. "Since you have made it abundantly clear how you feel, I can only conclude that you are either trying to play a practical joke on me, or that you are feeling unwell. Which one is it?"

Go poked him again. "You're impossible. I try to say something nice, and you just dismiss it."

Chase narrowed his eyes. "Is stating the obvious part of being human?"

"Damn robot logic," Go muttered.

"I'm your damn robot," Chase countered, and Go melted all over again, ridiculous quoting of a cheesy line or not.

"Yeah, you are," he said, and he couldn't seem to stop himself from smiling. It wasn't worth it to try, he was thinking, and then Chase poked holes in the mood.

"Does that make you my damn human?" Chase had an innocent enough expression on his face that Go couldn't tell if Chase was serious or trying to be funny, and either way the moment was over.

"I give up," he muttered. "I just. I give up. You win."

"So I get to keep you," Chase said, voice low and soft.

"Yeah," Go managed around the inexplicable lump in his throat. Chase hadn't ruined the moment after all, just turning into something uniquely reflective of him. "You get to keep me."

"I'm glad," Chase said, and reached up to stroke Go's hair.

"You and me both," Go said, feeling a sense of rightness and contentment settle into him. "And I wouldn't want it any other way."

never the end


End file.
